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UC-NRLF 


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RELIGIOUS  VALUES 

AND 

INTELLECTUAL  CONSISTENCY 


BY 

EDWARD  HARTMAN  BEISNER,  Ph.D. 


ARCHIVES  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

BDIIBD   BT 

FREDERICK  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE 


No.  5,  February,  1915 


Columbia  University  Coutribatlons  to  Pliilosophy  and  Psycliology. 

Vol.  XIX,  No.   I . 


NEW  YORK 
THE  SCIENCE  PRESS 
1915 


IM 


RELIGIOUS  VALUES 

AND 

INTELLECTUAL  CONSISTEKCY 


BT 

EDWARD  HARTMAN  EEISNEE 

V 

I 

t^  Submitted  in  Partial  fulfilment  of  the  requirements  of  the  degree 

of  Doctor  of  Philosophy  in  the  Faculty  of  Philosophy 
Columbia  University 


ARCHIVES  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

EDITED   BT 

FREDERICK  J.  E.  WOODBRIDGE 


No.  5,  February,  1915 


Columbia  UnlTersity  Contributions  to  Philosophy  and  Psychology. 

Vol.  XIX,  No.  1. 


NEW  YORK 
THE  SCIENCE  PEESS 
1915 


/? 


PRESS   OF 

THE   NEW   ERA    PRINTING  COMMNY 

LANCASTER.   PA. 


»  *  h        • 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The  author  wishes  to  acknowledge  his  great  indebtedness  in  the 
preparation  of  the  following  dissertation  to  the  guidance  and  the 
counsel  of  Professor  John  Dewey,  and  in  scarcely  less  degree  to  the 
helpful  criticisms  offered  by  Dean  Frederick  J.  E.  "Woodbridge.  He 
is  also  greatly  obliged  to  Professor  William  P.  Montague  and  Pro- 
fessor Dickinson  S.  Miller  for  suggestive  comment. 

E.  S.  R. 
Manhattan,  Kansas, 
August  28,  1914 


HI 


I  ^-ifcd-Tk/H  ft^ 


Chapter 
Chapter 


I. 
II. 


Chapter  III, 


Chapter  IV. 


OUTLINE 

Page 

Religious  Values  and  Intellectual  Consistency.  1 

The  Origin,  and  the  Disintegration  of  the  Intel- 
lectual Setting,  of  Classical  Christianity  5 

1.  The  Growth  of  the  Dogma 5 

2.  The  Disintegration  of  the  Intellectual  Set- 

ting of  Classical  Christianity    8 

Modern  Values  and  the  Religion  of  Idealism. .  15 

1.  Fichte    16 

i2.  Hegel    17 

3.  Royce   27 

A  Descriptive  Study  of  Religious  Experience  and 

the  God-concept - 39 

1.  Religion  below  the  Plane  of  the  God-concept  40 

2.  The  Various  Theisms 42 

3.  A  Religion  Compatible  with  Modern  Science  48 

4.  Practical  Conclusions 59 


•  »       a 


RELIGIOUS  VALUES  AND  INTELLECTUAL 

CONSISTENCY 


CHAPTER  I 

Religious  Values  and  Intellectual  Consistency 

"We  are  taught  by  modern  psychology  that  emotion  is  secondary 
to  physical  changes  taking  place  in  the  subject.  These  physical 
changes  are  directly  dependent  upon  the  presence  of  objects  or  ideas 
to  which  the  subject  ascribes  value  in  an  immediate  judgment.  The 
emotion  of  fear,  for  example,  follows  on  the  perception  of  an  object 
or  the  having  of  an  idea  that  points  to  disturbed  or  destroyed  values, 
as  the  loss  of  life  or  limb,  friend  or  fortune.  The  emotion  of  joy 
arises  in  the  presence  of  an  object  of  desire  and  accompanies  the 
presence  and  the  continuance  of  welfare.  And  so  on  we  might  run 
through  the  list  of  emotions  and  find  that  in  every  case  there  is  an 
original  perception  of  value  in  connection  with  an  object  or  an  idea. 

No  less  do  emotions  call  for  a  certain  consistency  of  objective 
experience.  The  play  that  can  not  present  a  convincing  case  is 
called  melodrama.  The  expressions  of  esteem  that  are  ill-founded 
and  casual  are  called  ' '  gush. ' '  The  religion  that  arouses  a  high  pitch 
of  feeling  on  ill-defined  and  vague  grounds  is  condemned  as  being 
''hysterical"  by  one  who  demands  an  adequate  reason  for  the 
enthusiasm. 

Whatever  else  it  may  be,  religion  is  an  emotional  attitude  toward 
the  whole  of  one's  experience.  As  such,  it  turns  upon  judgments  of 
value  and  demands  a  certain  amount  of  intellectual  consistency. 

To  illustrate  the  need  of  intellectual  consistency,  Augustine  re- 
fused the  proffered  solace  of  Christianity  until  he  came  to  interpret 
the  grand  appeal  in  terms  of  Platonic  thought.  Locke,  too,  had  to 
qualify  his  acceptance  of  the  Christian  faith  to  the  extent  of  reliev- 
ing it  of  its  unbelievable  materials  through  positing  human  reason 
as  superior  to  revelation.  Likewise,  a  man  imbued  with  the  spirit 
of  modern  science  must  modify  his  acceptance  of  the  Christian  tra- 
dition to  an  extent  that  is  often  considered  fatal  to  the  spirit  of 
that  faith. 

We  must  remember,  however,  that  intellectual  consistency  in 

1 


2  SELJGIOUS.T^ALPfS   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

religif'Ui< '^'ipbrieEce  ^sptiij'-  a  relative  matter,  as  it  is  in  business, 
polities; '  or  literary  composition.  What  will  constitute  consistency 
for  any  one  depends  upon  his  type  of  mind  and  the  depth  of  his 
interest.  A  man  who  may  exact  absolute  consistency  in  the  details 
of  a  building  plan,  will  be  blissfully  careless  in  the  details  of  a 
political  argument.  Another  who  must  find  consistency  to  the  hun- 
dredth of  one  per  cent,  in  the  conditions  of  an  international  loan 
may  accept  very  broad  discrepancies  in  the  particulars  of  a  religious 
faith.  A  knowledge  of  science  may  well  comport,  if  our  knowledge 
of  men  tells  us  anything,  with  miracles  and  hell-fire.  Accordingly, 
when  we  talk  of  the  necessity  for  intellectual  consistency  in  religious 
matters,  the  term  is  used  in  the  relative  sense  of  what  may  constitute 
consistency  for  any  given  individual. 

For  the  overwhelming  majority  of  those  who  are  called  by  the 
name  of  Christians  to-day,  the  classical  statement  of  the  faith  suffices, 
and  among  them  are  those  who  are  not  to  be  accounted  weak  of 
understanding.  As  a  case  in  point,  the  will  of  the  late  J.  Pierpont 
Morgan  begins  with  an  unqualified  statement  of  his  acceptance  of 
the  classic  dogma  of  the  Church,  It  is  a  striking  tribute  to  the 
simple  majesty  of  the  orthodox  faith  that  a  man  of  Mr.  Morgan's 
gigantic  intellectual  powers  found  solace  therein.  And  not  only 
for  the  sake  of  this  one  tribute,  but  because  of  millions  of  lives  that 
have  drawn  comfort  and  power  from  that  message,  we  must  acknowl- 
edge the  fundamental  appeal  of  the  theistic  world-plan.  It  is 
majestic  in  its  simplicity,  its  beauty,  and  its  practical  logic,  and  amply 
justified  in  the  works  of  many  of  its  believers. 

But  we  must  recognize  the  fact  that  a  different  way  of  looking 
at  the  problems  of  existence  causes  some  men  of  our  time  to  regard 
classical  Christianity  as  a  stupendous  and  beautiful  ruin.  The  facts 
they  learn  in  the  laboratory,  or  through  a  study  of  history,  or  from  a 
pursuit  of  philosophy,  demand  a  new  intellectual  setting  for  their 
religious  experiences.  At  its  best,  they  regard  the  Christian  plan  of 
sin  and  salvation  as  a  remarkable  poetic  conception,  worthy  of  ad- 
miration and  never  to  be  despised,  but  nevertheless  unable  to  furnish 
the  intellectual  background  for  their  free  spiritual  development; 
and  at  its  worst,  as  a  nest  of  logical  inconsistencies,  involving  a 
barren  saying  of  names  and  practise  of  forms  and  favoring  maudlin 
and  ineffective  sentimentality. 

Certainly  many  men  of  this  latter  type  of  intellectual  temper  are 
not  less  devoted  in  their  lives,  have  no  less  a  need  for  a  total  point 
of  view  from  which  their  own  individual  significance  may  be  evalu- 
ated, and  probably  have  no  less  attained  to  such  a  point  of  view, 
than  those  of  the  former.    Furthermore,  they  no  less  represent  the 


BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY        3 

historical  development  of  our  Western  religious  tradition.  The 
entire  question  of  the  significance  of  the  intellectual  background  of 
the  religious  experience,  accordingly,  is  for  us  a  matter  of  acute 
concern,  just  as  it  has  been  for  Christians  generally  during  the  best 
part  of  two  thousand  years. 

But  not  only  does  religion  demand  a  certain  amount  of  intellec- 
tual consistency.  As  an  emotional  attitude  toward  the  whole  of  one 's 
experience,  it  turns  upon  judgments  of  value.  To  be  informed  as  to 
how  thoroughly  this  is  the  case,  one  has  only  to  turn  the  pages  of  any 
devotional  book  or  to  attend  a  church  service.  Continued  life,  here 
and  hereafter,  health  of  body  and  mind,  material  prosperity,  the 
welfare  of  friends,  ethical  purity  and  the  furtherance  of  God's 
kingdom  on  earth,  are  some  of  the  most  notable  values  with  which 
men  are  concerned. 

Since  religion  is  so  largely  concerned  with  values,  it  necessarily 
follows  that  it  contains  a  large  amount  of  contingency;  for  values 
are  empirical  in  their  origin.  To  be  sure,  there  is  almost  unanimous 
recognition  of  a  certain  group  of  values  that  are  very  closely  related 
to  the  preservation  of  biological  integrity.  These  values  represent 
man's  dependence  on  his  physical  environment.  As  the  main  condi- 
tions of  life  are  everywhere  the  same,  we  find  in  our  own  devotions 
petitions  that  have  made  their  appeal  to  mankind  through  all  ages. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  values  that  are  highly  contingent. 
These  occur  in  connection  with  the  ethical  life  and  vary  with 
economic,  political,  and  intellectual  conditions.  The  ethical  values 
tliat  we  discover  in  the  experience  of  successive  heroes  of  our  reli- 
gious history  differ  vastly  from  one  another.  Abraham,  Moses, 
Samuel,  Elijah,  Amos,  Deutero-Isaiah,  Ezekiel,  Jesus,  Paul,  Benedict, 
Luther,  Fichte,  to  come  no  nearer  the  present  day,  may  each  be  said 
to  stand  for  a  significant  change  in  the  valuation  of  conduct.  Among 
them  is  a  wide  variation  in  regard  to  what  is  to  be  called  good.  Some 
of  the  values  held  to  directly  contradict  and  annul  others.  But  all 
are  parts  of  the  same  developing  tradition,  all  are  referred  to  God 
for  his  sanction,  and  each,  in  its  time  and  place,  expressed  the 
current  need. 

We  wish,  then,  to  recognize  two  facts:  that  the  main  concern  of 
religion  is  with  human  values,  and  that  the  spontaneity  and  richness 
of  the  religious  experience  depend  upon  an  intellectual  consistency 
among  the  objects  that  carry  those  values.  Furthermore,  one  who 
is  acquainted  with  the  history  of  Western  religious  thought  must  see 
that  vast  changes,  both  in  values  held  to  and  in  intellectual  settings 
accepted  as  self-consistent,  have  occurred.  During  the  entire  process 
of  evolution  of  our  religion,  a  single  concept,  God,  has  done  duty  as 


4  BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

the  guardian  and  sponsor  of  values;  and,  wliat  is  more,  this  same 
concept  has  been  the  chief  point  of  contention  among  those  who  have 
demanded  readjustment  of  intellectual  foundations.  The  prelim- 
inary situation  that  has  developed  indicates  that  a  treatment  of  the 
God-concept,  historical  in  spirit,  gives  large  promise  of  throwing 
light  upon  its  origin  and  meaning,  and  of  furnishing  us  with  a  clue 
that  will  go  far  toward  clearing  up  many  of  the  difficulties  of  reli- 
gious philosophy  that  are  current  and  that  have  been  recurrent  ever 
since  Greek  philosophy  threw  its  spell  over  the  naturalistic  faith  of 
Jesus. 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Origin  and  the  Disintegration  of  the  Intellectual 
Setting  op  Classical  Christianity 

1.  The  Growth  of  the  Dogma 

Classical  Christianity  has  been  produced  by  the  fusion  of  the 
religious  experience  of  the  Hebrews  with  the  religious  philosophy 
of  the  Greeks.  The  Hebrew  tradition  begins  with  Jehovah's  call  of 
Abram  to  leave  his  native  land  and  with  Abram's  acceptance  of 
Jehovah  as  the  patron  divinity  of  his  house  and  tribe.  The  relation- 
ship between  Jehovah  and  the  tribe  is  strictly  clannish,  involves 
mutual  obligations,  and  reflects  the  crude  morality  of  nomadic  life. 
At  the  time  of  Moses,  the  general  relationship  between  Jehovah  and 
the  Hebrew  people  is  little  changed  from  that  of  the  earlier  period, 
but,  if  anything,  Jehovah  is  more  definitely  recognized  as  the  guide 
of  his  people,  who  have  developed  a  more  specialized  conception  of 
their  tribal  ties.  The  development  within  the  tribe  of  a  set  of  mores 
that  is  representative  of  a  finer  sense  of  reciprocal  social  obligations 
is  reflected  in  the  moral  demands  of  the  Jehovah  of  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments. The  exigencies  of  a  hard  struggle  to  win  a  footing  in 
the  Land  of  Canaan,  followed  by  a  phenomenal  national  growth 
under  Saul,  David,  and  Solomon,  developed  to  a  high  pitch  the  feeling 
of  racial  solidarity  and  of  dependence  upon,  and  love  for,  the  God 
who  had  brought  national  success.  But  the  period  of  national  pros- 
perity was  followed  by  crushing  vicissitudes  that  resulted  both  from 
internal  dissension  and  from  the  aggressions  of  more  powerful 
neighbors. 

The  kaleidoscopic  changes  that  took  place  in  the  political  fortunes 
of  the  Jews,  since  these  changes  were  so  closely  bound  up  with  the 
conception  of  Jehovah's  guidance,  led  to  searching  consideration  of 
such  conduct  as  was  consistent  with  the  possession  of  his  favor;  and 
the  final  loss  of  political  autonomy  at  the  hands  of  the  Babylonian 
Empire  could  lead  to  no  other  conclusion  than  that  the  sins  of  the 
people  and  their  disregard  of  chastity,  temperance,  justice,  charity, 
and  humility  w^ere  the  causes  of  their  destruction  as  a  nation,  God's 
chastisement  of  his  people  through  the  agency  of  foreign  nations  was 
only  an  indication  of  his  universal  influence ;  so  the  religious  leaders 
of  the  Jews  set  up  as  their  ideal  of  life  just  such  a  character  as  was 
believed  to  be  desired  by  a  universal  God,  and,  accordingly,  to  be  of 

5 


6         EELIGIOUS   VALUES  AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

universal  significance.  The  political  ambitions  of  the  Jews  were 
modified  by  their  great  spiritual  leaders,  to  the  expectation  of  the 
establishment  of  God's  kingdom  in  a  world-wide  order  of  peace  and 
good-will. 

The  culmination  of  the  Hebrew  tradition  occurs  in  Jesus 's  identi- 
fication of  himself  with  the  expected  messenger  of  this  new  order 
and  in  his  preaching  of  the  expected  coming  of  the  new  kingdom. 
History  has  never  told  us  and  probably  never  will  tell  us  just  what 
relation  Jesus  conceived  himself  as  bearing  to  the  new  kingdom,  nor 
even  just  what  that  kingdom  was  to  be  and  how  and  when  it  was  to 
be  established;  for  the  generation  of  Jesus  distinctly  exhibits  the 
influence  of  Greek  thought  on  Hebrew  religious  tradition,  and  the 
rapid  changes  in  the  intellectual  setting  of  the  religious  experience 
occurring  at  that  time  had  their  effect  on  the  accounts  of  his  life  that 
we  have  from  his  disciples.  This  is  true  to  the  extent  that  it  has  been 
impossible  to  separate  satisfactorily  the  beliefs  and  attitudes  of 
those  who  handed  down  and  formulated  the  Christian  message  from 
that  message  as  it  was  delivered  by  the  Master. 

The  main  outlines  of  the  Greek  intellectual  life  with  which  the 
Hebrew  religious  tradition  fused  during  the  cosmopolitan  period  of 
the  early  Church  may  be  summed  up  as  follows :  The  inner  essence 
of  reality  is  eternal,  rational,  creative  Unity.  It  is  the  uncaused 
cause  of  the  phenomenal,  changing  world.  It  is  the  law  and  order 
of  the  universe  and  the  principle  of  reasonable,  virtuous  conduct  in 
men.  These  phases  of  Being  were  separately  viewed,  on  the  one 
hand,  as  God,  the  principle  of  inner  unity,  of  unimpeachable  per- 
fection and  of  causation  that  was  unaffected  by  its  creative  office; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  as  the  Logos,  the  begotten  of  God,  the  prin- 
ciple of  natural  law  and  of  moral  excellence  in  humankind. 

The  similarity  in  position,  function,  and  meaning  between  the 
Jehovah  of  the  later  prophets  and  the  God  of  Greek  thought  made 
easy  the  identification  of  the  two  forms.  Paul,  standing  on  Mars 
Hill  in  Athens,  quotes  the  Hymn  of  the  Stoic  Cleanthes  and  claims 
that  the  Perfect  Beings  of  the  two  racial  traditions  are  one  and  the 
same.  The  peculiar  position  given  Jesus  by  his  disciples  immediately 
after  his  death,  namely,  as  the  founder  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  and 
the  only  Son  of  the  Father,  made  it  easy  to  substitute  his  name  and 
office  for  that  of  the  Logos.  And,  finally,  the  kingdom  of  the  re- 
deemed, the  Church,  was  composed  of  those  whose  lives  had  been 
touched  by  the  purifying  Spirit  of  God  and  transformed  by  its  pres- 
ence. Thus  we  have  a  point-for-point  substitution  within  the  Chris- 
tian faith  of  the  main  elements  in  the  Greek  philosophy.  God  is  pure 
being;  Jesus  and  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  community  are  the  Logos, 
viewed,  firstly,  as  individual  and,  secondly,  as  common  possession. 


TEE   OEIGIN   OF  CLASSICAL   CHEISTIANITT  7 

The  practical  results  of  this  fusion  were  not  slow  to  make  them- 
selves felt.  When  the  Logos  was  identified  with  a  person,  a  temporal 
succession  was  involved  that  extended  back  into  history  before  that 
person  and  reached  forward  into  all  time  to  come.  The  Hebrew  tra- 
dition, as  pointing  forward  to  Christ,  is  specialized  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  Spirit  before  Christ  came ;  and  the  Church,  the  Beloved 
Community,  as  Royce  describes  it,  became  the  custodian  of  grace  for 
future  generations.  This  narrowing  down  of  the  field  of  operation 
of  the  Logos  was  not  without  its  effect  upon  the  definition  of  the 
virtuous  life.  Virtue  became  limited  to  the  virtue  acceptable  within 
the  Church,  which  had  its  ideals  materially  influenced  by  the  acci- 
dents of  persecution  and  outlawry  and  by  the  expectation  of  a 
speedy  coming  of  an  eschatological  kingdom.  The  world  and  all  the 
interests  thereof,  as  untouched  by  the  transforming  influence  of  the 
spirit  of  the  community,  were  depraved  and  lost.  "For  all  that  is 
in  the  world,  the  lust  of  the  flesh  and  the  lust  of  the  eyes,  and  the 
pride  of  life,  is  not  of  the  Father,  but  is  of  the  world."  A  profound 
distrust  and  condemnation  of  all  things  biological  and  natural  was 
the  sharply  defined  attitude  of  the  Christian  community.  All  values 
were  believed  to  be  found  within  the  realm  of  Grace  and  were  be- 
lieved to  have  been  created  through  the  redemptive  office  of  Christ. 
Furthermore,  the  doctrine  of  an  immortal  life  was  a  handy  vehicle 
for  the  transposition  of  all  interests  to  the  heavenly  kingdom,  for 
which  life  on  earth  was  to  be  regarded  only  as  a  preparation. 

The  detailed  accommodation  of  the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek  ele- 
ments, while  represented  in  the  doctrines  of  the  Church,  is  the  work 
of  the  Middle  Ages  and  occurs  in  its  most  thoroughgoing  form  in  the 
work  of  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  official  philosopher  of  the  Catholic 
Church  at  the  present  day.  While  recognizing  a  difference  between 
the  realms  of  natural  reason  and  of  faith,  he  subordinates  the  former 
to  the  latter  and  thus  finds  a  place  for  the  dogmas  of  the  church  that 
are  not  demonstrable  by  means  of  the  natural  reason.  The  con- 
ception of  God,  however,  is  for  Thomas  a  strictly  demonstrable  fact, 
for  there  must  be  a  first  cause  of  the  world,  a  final  link  in  the  other- 
wise unending  chain  of  natural  causation.  In  Aristotelian  terms, 
Thomas  thought  of  God  as  pure,  immaterial  form,  as  pure  actuality, 
wholly  free  from  potentiality,  the  efficient  and  final  cause  of  the 
world.  Other  important  scholastic  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God  are 
the  ontological  and  the  teleological.  The  former  passes  from  the  con- 
ception of  an  absolutely  perfect  Being  to  the  actual  existence  of  that 
Being  on  the  grounds  that  perfection  must  include  actual  existence. 
The  latter  concludes,  from  the  presence  of  law  and  order  and  appar- 
ent design  in  the  world,  that  there  must  be  a  great  architect  who 


8  BELIGIOUS    VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

formed  the  world  in  its  perfection.  A  more  comprehensive  state- 
ment of  these  proofs  will  be  given  later  on  in  connection  with  Kant 's 
criticism  of  their  validity. 

2.   The  Disintegration  of  the  Intellectual  Setting  of 
Classical  Christianity    - 

The  foregoing  description  of  the  elements  that  came  together  to 
form  classical  Christianity  is  intended  to  present,  in  sufficiently  de- 
tailed fashion  for  our  purpose,  the  setting  of  the  stupendous  struggle 
in  regard  to  both  the  intellectual  elements  of  religion  and  the  values 
concerned  therein,  that  has  been  going  on  in  Western  Europe  for  the 
last  two  hundred  years  and  the  end  of  which  is  not  yet.  This  con- 
flict has  often  been  described  as  being  between  Christianity  and  sci- 
ence, but  it  might  better  be  spoken  of  as  being  between  Greek  meta- 
physics and  modern  empirical  science.  A  second  factor  that  enters 
into  the  situation  is  the  development  and  the  acceptance  of  a  new  set 
of  values,  which,  however  close  they  may  be  in  the  main  to  the  values 
of  classical  Christianity,  are  quite  independent  of  the  traditional 
realm  of  grace  and,  in  some  particulars,  directly  opposed  to  the 
accepted  values  of  the  Church. 

We  must  recognize  the  fact,  however,  that  the  reconstruction  of 
the  intellectual  setting  of  religious  values  that  is  mentioned  above 
has  not  taken  place  in  the  whole  of  society  taken  in  cross-section,  * 
but  only  within  a  very  limited  part.  Classical  Christianity  still 
survives  in  the  Catholic  Church!  without  acknowledged  change ;  and 
for  the  orthodox  Protestant,  which  means  practically  every  member 
of  the  sects  of  the  present  day,  the  intellectual  setting  of  the  religious 
life  remains  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  same  as  it  was  in  the 
flowering  period  of  the  Church.  But  there  has  taken  place  among 
certain  elements  of  the  intellectual  class  a  change  of  attitude  that 
is  profound,  and  it  is  with  the  experiences  of  this  portion  of  society 
that  we  shall  be  primarily  concerned  in  the  discussion  to  follow. 

As  was  said  above,  the  developing  influence  of  modern  empirical 
science  has  been  responsible,  more  than  any  other  agency,  for  the 
overthrow  of  the  authoritative  position  of  Greek  metaphysics  in  our 
intellectual  life  and,  consequently,  for  the  discrediting  of  a  creed 
representative  of  Greek  thought.  When  men  had  only  Hellenic 
philosophy  to  turn  to,  they  found  their  way  ordinarily  to  some  sort 
of  belief  in  the  dogma ;  but  when  they  gained  independent  intellectual 
interests  that  were  in  no  sense  related  to  the  dogma,  their  allegiance 
to  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  was  seriously  disturbed. 

The  first  notable  influence  of  modern  science  on  the  Christian 


THE   ORIGIN   OF  CLASSICAL   CHBISTIANITT  9 

faith  came  in  connection  with  a  criticism  of  the  scientific  conceptions 
of  the  Bible.  The  Copernican  system  of  astronomy  (1543),  for  ex- 
ample, ran  counter  to  all  the  astronomical  references  of  the  sacred 
writings.  With  a  new  cosmologieal  theory  in  vogue,  proved  by  the 
highest  sort  of  intellectual  authority  known  to  the  times,  a  book 
that  set  forth  an  inconsistent  and  disproved  theory  necessarily  lost 
prestige.  Furthermore,  the  narratives  of  miraculous  events,  as  given, 
both  in  the  Old  and  in  the  New  Testaments,  were  distasteful  to  the 
newly-awakened  scientific  sense.  When  the  claim  of  divine  revela- 
tion stood  opposed  by  these  inconsistencies,  the  choice  was  between 
a  retreat  from  the  position  gained  by  the  progressive  learning  and 
the  denial  of  the  divine  character  of  the  Bible  and  its  literal  revela- 
tion. As  it  turned  out,  the  explanation  of  the  physical  universe 
begun  by  the  pioneers  Copernicus,  Kepler,  and  GaUleo  and  completed 
by  Newton,  was  too  convincing,  too  real,  too  authoritative,  to  allow 
the  less  strongly  substantiated  biblical  conceptions  to  stand  before  it. 

The  disintegration  of  the  classical  intellectual  setting  of  the 
Christian  religion  had  thus  begun  in  the  attack  upon  the  divinely 
inspired  character  of  the  Bible.  So  far  the  classical  conception  of 
God  had  not  been  disturbed  except  in  so  far  as  God  had  been  con- 
sidered as  the  inspirer  of  Holy  Writ.  The  quarrel  of  science  had  so 
far  been  only  with  the  book  and  the  idea  of  revelation.  In  proof  of 
this,  Descartes 's  God  is  that  of  St.  Anselm  and  he  uses  the  same 
proofs  of  his  existence.  Locke  uses  the  teleological  proof  to  demon- 
strate the  existence  of  the  identical  omniscient,  eternal,  omnipotent 
Being  that  his  times  accepted  as  a  legacy  from  medieval  thought. 
Leibnitz  began  his  "Metaphysics"  with  the  following:  "The  con- 
ception of  God  which  is  the  most  common  and  the  most  full  of  mean- 
ing is  expressed  well  enough  in  the  words, — God  is  an  absolutely 
perfect  Being."  He  did  not  criticize  the  concept  on  his  own  account, 
but  accepted  it  in  toto  from  tradition  and  common  opinion.  English 
Deism  might  reject  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  and  deny  the  media- 
tion of  the  Christ  between  an  angry  God  and  the  sinner;  but  it  re- 
tained its  confidence  in  the  power  of  reason,  unaided  by  any  mirac- 
ulous means,  to  prove  the  existence  of  the  single,  all-wise,  all-perfect 
Creator  of  the  universe.  Voltaire  might  rage  against  "Vlnfame," 
proclaiming  unceasingly  against  priestcraft  and  fanaticism,  but  he 
never  denied  God's  existence.  The  God  of  the  Enlightenment  may 
be  defined  in  the  terms  used  in  the  Westminster  Shorter  Catechism, 
as  "a  spirit  infinite,  eternal  and  unchangeable  in  his  being,  wisdom, 
power,  holiness,  justice,  goodness  and  truth." 

The  beginning  of  the  critical  overthrow  of  the  above  conception 
of  God  occurred  in  Locke's  statement  about  substance,  namely,  that 


10       EELIGIOUS   VALUES  AND  INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

he  had  **no  other  idea  of  it  at  all  except  a  supposition  of  he  knows 
not  what  support  of  such  qualities  which  are  capable  of  producing 
simple  ideas  in  us."^  Again  he  defines  it  as  ''nothing  but  the  sup- 
posed, but  unknown  support  of  those  qualities  we  find  existing,  which 
we  imagine  can  not  subsist  without  sometliing  to  support  them," 
Locke  did  not  work  out  the  implications  of  his  definition,  but  used 
his  position  to  defend  his  belief  in  spirits,  and  hence  in  the  Abso- 
lute Spirit,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  no  harder  to  conceive  the 
existence  of  a  spirit  than  of  a  body. 

The  forcing  in  of  the  wedge  planted  by  Locke,  which  takes  place 
in  the  work  of  Berkeley  and  Hume,  is  known  to  all.  Berkeley  devel- 
oped the  position  that  matter  is  not  an  entity  and  that  its  existence 
is  limited  to  the  sensations  that  are  referred  to  it  for  support.  To  be 
is  to  be  perceived.  Spirits  and  their  ideas  comprise  all  of  reality. 
But  as  Berkeley  was  pleading  the  special  cause  of  spirit,  and  therein 
of  the  God  of  religion,  he  failed  to  see  that  the  same  criticism  that 
he  had  so  well  applied  to  matter  was  no  less  cogent  in  its  reference 
to  spirit.  This  point  was  developed  in  the  philosophy  of  Hume,  who 
insists  that  if  one  is  to  be  truly  empirical  in  his  procedure,  as  becomes 
your  true  scientist,  he  will  accept  nothing  except  what  he  gains 
through  his  experience.  Under  such  drastic  conditions,  Berkeley's 
recognition  of  spirits  as  substantial  entities  is  unwarranted,  for  one 
never  so  much  as  perceives  his  own  self,  or  spirit.  What  one  gains 
from  looking  into  his  experience  consists  of  some  isolated  and  par- 
ticular sensation  or  feeling.  He  can  perceive  that  one  idea  follows 
another,  but  he  is  altogether  unable  to  discover  or  to  prove  the  pres- 
ence of  connections  and  causal  linkages  between  them.  If  the  direct 
perception  of  spirit  is  as  impossible  as  the  direct  perception  of 
matter,  then  on  the  basis  of  experience  as  the  warrant  of  belief,  we 
have  as  little  ground  for  belief  in  spirit  substance  as  we  have  for 
belief  in  matter  substance.  But  not  only  are  we  unable  to  gain  a 
direct  knowledge  of  substance ;  we  are  not  able  to  gain  an  inferential 
knowledge  of  it,  because  the  linkages  of  experience  that  might  lead  to 
the  proof  of  such  a  unity  are  undiscoverable.  Take  for  example  the 
conception  of  cause  and  effect.  We  see  the  motion  of  a  ball  and  its 
contact  with  another,  and  we  say  that  the  first  ball's  motion  caused 
the  motion  of  the  second.  But  all  we  know  is  that  the  second  ball 
moved  after  it  was  struck  by  the  first.  We  do  not  know  why  it  moved 
and  the  only  warrant  for  our  expecting  the  same  phenomenon  to  be 
repeated  is  force  of  habit.  We  are  acquainted  with  the  fact  of 
succession,  but  not  with  the  fact  of  necessary  connection. 

Hume's  criticism  may  be  seen  to  have  set  a  number  of  problems 

1  "Essay,"  II,  Ch.  23,  Sect.  2. 


THE   OBIGIN   OF   CLASSICAL   CHBISTIANITY  11 

for  philosophy.  If  spirit  substance  does  not  exist,  then  what  of  God 
and  what  of  the  finite  ego,  both  of  which  had  up  to  that  time  been 
defined  as  substances?  If  there  are  no  discoverably  valid  linkages 
between  the  individual  facts  and  perceptions  that  we  discover  in 
consciousness,  then  what  can  be  the  ground  of  a  unified  and  law- 
abiding  experience  of  a  natural  order  and  of  our  own  personal 
selves  ?  But  his  skeptical  attitude  toward  the  constitution  of  experi- 
ence went  so  far  as  to  contradict  the  actual  conditions  of  an  experi- 
ence that  might  be  shown  as  already  possessed.  For  our  experience 
does  hold  together  as  a  unity.  Every  item  of  it  has  for  each  of  us  a 
personal  reference  and  its  relationship  to  other  items  within  the 
same  experience.  The  objective  world  holds  together  in  cause  and 
effect  series.  No  object  is  perceived  except  in  space,  which  is  dis- 
coverable as  a  precondition  of  any  objective  experience  whatever. 
No  variety  of  experience  is  possible  except  on  the  condition  of  tem- 
poral succession,  which  is  equally  recognizable  as  an  ineradicable 
inner  quality  of  experience. 

On  such  grounds  as  the  above,  Kant  is  led  to  consider  experience 
as  the  product  of  reason  acting  upon  the  raw  materials  of  sensation. 
Experience  must  exhibit  spatial  and  temporal  quality,  cause  and 
effect  relations,  unity  and  continuity,  for  these  are  of  its  inner  con- 
stitution. However,  if  Kant  is  thus  able  to  validate  experience  and 
thereby  the  possibility  of  mathematical  and  physical  science,  he  is 
compelled  to  limit  judgments  that  are  to  pass  as  matter  of  fact  to 
the  field  of  verifiability.  The  judgments  of  mathematics  and  physics 
are  justifiable  because  they  can  be  tested.  If  they  are  proved  and 
not  found  wanting  in  a  fruitful  manipulation  of  experience  and  a 
control  of  further  fact,  they  are  to  be  accepted.     Otherwise,  not.  ' 

This  result  of  the  Kantian  criticism  substantiated  Hume's  scep- 
ticism regarding  the  possibility  of  discovering  the  substantial  ego 
and  of  demonstrating  God's  existence  as  a  spiritual  substance.  For, 
if  Kant  proved  to  his  own  satisfaction  that  there  is  a  unity  of  experi- 
ence, a  central  reference  and  practical  connection  and  continuity  that 
establishes  empirical  selfhood,  he  was  no  less  urgent  in  his  contention 
that  to  posit  a  substantial,  immaterial,  imperishable  ego  from  the 
presence  of  experience  in  its  empirically  knowable  form,  was  an 
induction  entirely  beyond  the  facts.  ''I  think,  therefore  I  am,"  had 
been  expanded  without  warrant  into  "I  think,  therefore  I  am 
spiritual  substance  and  substantial  ego." 

Not  less  unjustifiable  than  the  attempt  to  verify  by  theoretical 
reason  the  existence  of  the  pure  ego,  was  the  attempt  to  describe  a 
completed  cosmos.  Kant  showed  that  it  was  equally  possible  to 
prove  that  the  world  has  had  a  beginning  in  time  and  has  a  limit  in 


12        EELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

space,  and  to  show  that  such  a  temporal  beginning  and  such  a  spatial 
limit  are  unthinkable;  to  prove  that  the  world  is  composed  of  indi- 
visible atoms  and  to  prove  that  there  can  be  no  limit  set  to  the  divis- 
ibility of  things  in  space;  to  prove  that  there  must  be  a  free  first 
cause  of  the  finite  series  of  cause  and  effect,  and  to  show  that  such 
examples  of  free  causation  can  never  exist  in  the  natural  order ;  and, 
finally,  to  prove  that  the  world  as  a  whole  must  depend  on  a  neces- 
sarily existent  Being,  and  to  show  that  there  is  no  support  for  belief 
in  the  existence  of  such  a  Being.  Such  contradictions  arise  from  the 
attempt  to  consider  a  constantly  developing  experience  as  at  some  one 
time  completed  and  static,  and  to  apply  to  that  experience,  viewed  as 
a  connected  whole,  conceptions  that  occur  only  within  the  network 
of  its  living  and  expanding  unity.  For  example,  the  principle  of 
cause  and  effect  is  one  of  the  established  relations  of  experience. 
Unless  its  elements  were  bound  together  in  cause  and  effect  series, 
experience  would  not  be  what  it  is.  But  it  is  a  confusion  of  terms 
to  attempt  to  apply  a  conception  that  is  valid  within  experience  to 
the  same  experience  viewed  as  a  whole,  for  "the  whole  of  experi- 
ence" is  really  e'xifm-experiential.  The  conceptions  of  a  finished 
cause  and  effect  series  and  of  a  necessarily  existent  Being  are  pre- 
cisely such  conceptions  as  we  can  find  no  empirical  warrant  for,  be- 
cause they  lie  outside  the  jurisdiction  of  experience.  In  general,  we 
may  say  that  Kant  establishes,  through  his  discussion  of  the  Antin- 
omies of  Pure  Reason,  the  necessary  limitation  of  legitimate  cosmo- 
logical  speculation  to  the  field  of  empirical  fact  and  to  hypotheses 
that  represent  only  an  extension  of  such  expectations  as  are  verifiable 
within  known  experience. 

A  further  negative  result  of  the  Kantian  criticism  is  its  dis- 
crediting of  both  the  methods  and  the  findings  of  dogmatic  theology. 
As  has  been  said  before  in  this  paper,  the  traditional  proofs  of  the 
existence  of  God  were  three:  the  Cosmological,  the  Teleological,  and 
the  Ontological.  Of  these,  the  Cosmological  is  based  upon  the  theses 
of  the  third  and  fourth  antinomies  discussed  above.  God  exists  be- 
cause there  must  be  free  causation  to  explain  the  beginnings  of 
causal  series,  and  the  existence  of  the  contingent  world  of  fact  must 
be  based  upon  an  absolute  and  unchanging  reality.  The  same  argu- 
ment that  was  used  by  Kant  in  opposition  to  these  theses,  namely, 
that  experience  gives  us  no  possible  link  of  a  series  of  causation  that 
can  be  possibly  conceived  of  as  independent  of  a  like  causal  relation 
to  that  which  it  maintains  with  the  rest  of  the  series,  is  applicable 
in  connection  with  the  Cosmological  proof  of  God's  existence.  It  is 
simply  impossible  to  reconcile  the  demands  of  experience  with  the 
conception  of  a  Being  that  lies  quite  outside  the  conditions  of  that 
experience. 


TEE   ORIGIN   OF  CLASSICAL   CHRISTIANITY  13 

The  Teleologieal  proof  argues  from  the  presence  of  order  and 
design  in  nature  to  the  existence  of  a  great  architect  who  planned  the 
perfection  of  things.  But  could  such  design  be  substantiated  it  would 
only  point  to  the  existence  of  a  very  powerful  and  very  wise  manipu- 
lator of  given  materials  and  would  still  necessitate  proof  of  the 
existence  of  a  creator  as  well  as  of  a  builder.  And,  at  all  events, 
neither  the  Teleologieal  argument  nor  the  Cosmological  could  prove 
that  the  First  Cause  was  the  Perfect  Being  that  is  the  conception  of 
theology  and  the  object  of  religious  worship. 

The  last  prop  of  dogmatism  is,  accordingly,  the  Ontological  argu- 
ment, in  which  proof  is  brought  that  existence  is  necessarily  an 
attribute  of  the  most  perfect  Being.  Existence,  it  is  said,  is  the  final 
badge  of  perfection,  without  which  our  conception  of  God  would  be 
a  self-contradiction.  Much  has  been  said  about  the  validity  of  the 
Ontological  argument,  and  Kant  has  been  accused  of  failing  alto- 
gether to  see  its  real  significance.  Most  baldly  stated,  as  in  Falcken- 
berg's  ''History  of  Philosophy, "^  Kant  attacks  the  argument  on  the 
grounds  of  "the  impossibility  of  dragging  out  of  an  idea  the  exist- 
ence of  the  object  corresponding  to  it."  Just  as  a  dream  of  one 
hundred  dollars  does  not  increase  my  purchasing  capacity,  just  so 
my  idea  of  a  Perfect  Being,  no  matter  what  its  attributes,  does  not 
give  that  Being  existential  reality  independent  of  my  idea.  Accord- 
ing to  Kant,  then,  the  Ontological  argument  is  an  absurd  tautology. 

There  is,  however,  a  certain  sense  in  which  Kant's  critics  may 
accuse  him,  not  of  misunderstanding  the  ontological  argument  as  it 
existed  at  his  time,  but  of  failing  to  take  into  account  the  enlarged 
significance  of  the  argument  for  post-Kantian  Idealism,  for  which 
his  own  philosophy  was  the  propaedeutic.  To  say  that  in  every 
triangle  the  sum  of  the  angles  is  equal  to  two  right  angles,  is  to  posit 
the  existence  of  the  triangle  as  a  conception.  It  does  not  imply  the 
existence  of  any  triangular  plot  of  ground  or  any  triangular  outline 
upon  the  blackboard  or  triangular  anything  whatsoever.  But,  it  is 
said  in  truth,  the  exemplification  of  the  triangle  is  not,  after  all,  its 
reality;  when  you  have  stated  the  conditions  of  its  existence,  you 
have  ipso  facto  posited  that  existence.  The  same  application  may  be 
made  on  a  larger  scale  to  the  Reality  of  Absolute  Idealism,  and  is 
made,  in  fact,  by  Hegel.  But  for  Kant's  day  and  in  the  spirit  of 
Anselm,  certainly  there  was  had  in  mind  to  correspond  to  the 
existence  of  God,  a  kind  of  existence  that  was  quite  independent  of 
experience. 

By  way  of  summary,  we  may  say  that  Kant's  critical  philosophy 
undermined  the  intellectual  foundations  of  classical  Christianity.    It 

2Tr.,  p.  380. 


14        BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

disproved  the  existence  of  a  scientific  proof  of  a  substantial  ego  that 
could  be  saved  to  immortal  life;  it  showed  the  impossibility  of  a 
scientific  proof  of  a  creative  act  by  means  of  which  God  would  be  seen 
as  responsible  for  the  initiation  of  the  physical  cosmos  and  the  human 
race;  and,  finally,  it  exhibited  the  futility  of  ever  trying  to  make 
consistent  Math  the  facts  of  science,  the  conception  of  a  perfect 
spiritual  Being  outside  the  realm  of  human  experience. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  follow  Kant  in  his  attempt  to  rebuild 
the  religious  structure,  that  he  had  so  badly  shattered,  on  the  new 
foundations  of  active  moral  purpose  and  "practical"  autonomy  that 
he  described  as  actually  experienced.  But  to  do  so  would  be  to 
follow  Kant  back  into  the  spirit  of  the  very  philosophy  that  his 
critical  efforts  had  discredited.  The  forward  movement  of  modem 
philosophy  leads  beyond  Kant  into  forms  of  speculation  that  are 
hardly  less  subversive  of  the  principles  of  science  than  the  dogmatism 
that  he  so  vigorously  and  successfully  attacked.  We  expect,  however, 
in  the  course  of  our  argument  to  return  to  the  spirit  of  the  Gx'eater 
Critique  and  to  the  methods  of  scientific  description. 


CHAPTER  III 

Modern  Values  and  the  Religion  of  Idealism 

In  turning  away  from  the  discredited  intellectual  structure  of 
Classical  Christianity  to  a  new  formulation  of  beliefs  about  God,  it 
is  necessary  to  take  into  account  the  development  of  a  fundamentally 
different  set  of  values,  according  to  which  man  and  his  natural 
interests  and  proclivities  are  appraised  at  a  very  different  rating 
than  under  the  conception  of  the  realm  of  grace.  It  will  be  obvi- 
ously impossible,  in  such  a  treatment  as  this,  to  do  justice  to  the  his- 
torical evolution  of  the  new  spirit  as  it  has  developed  in  Europe 
since  the  fourteenth  century,  so  we  shall  be  content  with  indicating 
some  of  the  earlier  results.  By  the  eighteenth  century,  a  voice  was 
found  to  speak  out  the  belief  in  the  dignity  and  worth  of  humanity ; 
and  from  that  day  to  this  it  has  never  been  stilled,  but  is  gaining  in 
force  and  power  of  speech.  It  has  moved  giant  arms  to  do  its  bidding 
and  is  so  moving  them  to-day. 

The  Enlightenment  in  almost  all  its  aspects  and  through  most  of 
its  representatives  is  a  strong  statement  of  man's  independence  and 
power  as  a  thinking  being.  It  also  sounds  the  note  of  human  worth, 
of  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  individual  as  an  individual.  To  Rous- 
seau, however,  we  are  indebted  for  embodying  in  language  this  new 
sense  of  the  instrumental  character  of  institutions  and  their  real 
mission  of  ministering  to  the  larger  life  of  the  man,  whose  happiness, 
welfare,  and  self-expression  become  thereby  the  end  and  object  of 
states  and  laws.  Rosseau  calls  upon  his  nation  to  take  up  again  the 
power  w^hich  resides  within  the  citizenship  and  make  of  the  forms 
of  social  organization  just  what  they  should  be  and  what  they  ideally 
are,  ministrants  to  human  welfare  and  the  embodiments  of  mutual 
rights  and  obligations.  The  French  Revolution  is  the  great  response 
to  the  growing  conviction  among  the  people  of  France  of  the  funda- 
mental truth  of  the  propositions  voiced  by  Rousseau  and  others. 
It  is  the  great  practical  demonstration  in  Europe  of  the  existence  of 
a  new  sense  of  values  and  of  the  widespread  and  emphatic  conviction 
of  the  worth  of  man  and  the  importance  of  his  earthly  existence.  The 
American  Declaration  of  Independence  and  American  democratic 
institution  indicate  the  same  trend  of  ideas.  The  appeal  of  Bentham 
in  England  for  social  forms  and  conditions  that  would  insure  *'the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number"  is  a  theoretical  formulation 

2  15 


16       EELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND  INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

of  the  same  spirit.  The  general  impulse  of  the  times  was  felt  also  by 
Kant,  who  lends  content  to  his  rationalistic  ethics  through  his  state- 
ment that  every  man  should  be  considered  as  an  end  in  himself  and 
never  as  a  mere  means  to  some  one  else 's  end.  For  him,  conduct  uni- 
versally rationalized  turns  upon  individual  rights  and  individual 
worth  as  its  center.  But  it  is  when  we  come  to  the  philosophy  of 
Fichte  that  this  conviction  of  the  truth  of  social  democracy  as  the 
larger  setting  of  man 's  entire  ethical  life,  gets  its  most  elaborate  and 
emphatic  presentation  and  is  taken  up  as  the  value  element  of  a 
religion. 

At  this  point  we  may  briefly  indicate  the  general  characteristics  of 
the  new  intellectual  life  that  furnishes  a  setting  for  the  conception 
of  values  outlined  above.  The  philosophical  movement  may  be  de- 
scribed as  post-Kantian  Idealism,  and  it  may  be  said  to  build  upon 
the  foundations  of  the  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason."  But  the  things- 
in-themselves,  last  relics  of  a  philosophy  that  Kant  discredited,  are 
banished  into  the  limbo  of  speculative  antiques,  and  the  world  of  ex- 
perience, the  world  of  the  Esthetic  and  the  Analytic,  is  accepted  as 
the  realm  within  which  philosophy  may  work  or  dream  or  upon  which 
it  may  erect  superstructures  of  invention.  The  conditions  of  mental 
life  that  Kant  describes  as  the  guarantee  of  safety  and  sanity,  are 
magnified  into  world-large  forms  and  made  the  indwelling  and 
active  soul  of  the  world  of  phenomena.  Instead  of  going  beyond  phe- 
nomena, and  explaining  them  by  means  of  independent  noumenal 
substances,  post-Kantian  Idealism  links  together  the  facts  of  experi- 
ence and  makes  of  them  a  unity,  just  as  Kant  represented  the  experi- 
ence of  an  individual  as  holding  together  by  means  of  the  transcen- 
dental unity  of  apperception.  The  universe  was  regarded  as  a  devel- 
oping, purposeful  consciousness. 

1.  Fichte 

The  initial  development  of  Idealism,  as  exhibited  in  Fichte 's 
philosophy,  was  one-sided  and  incomplete.  Fichte  saw  in  the  phe- 
nomena of  experience  only  the  necessary  raw  material  for  the  devel- 
opment of  a  moral  World-Self.  This  World-Self  finds  its  expression 
in  the  individual  lives  of  men,  coming  to  self-consciousness  only  upon 
the  recognition  of  a  duty  to  be  performed.  Action,  effort,  conquest, 
are  the  price  of  selfhood.  Reality  is  a  process  of  moral  evolution. 
The  aim  of  the  World-Self,  realized  through  the  individuals  that 
represent  its  own  particularization,  is  the  production  of  values. 
The  religious  implications  of  this  philosophy  are  that  God  lives  in 
the  lives  of  men.  His  reality  is  the  net  sum  of  their  moral  worth.  He 
is  in  the  world  of  action,  not  outside  it.    His  existence  is  in  the  ideals 


MODEBN   VALUES  AND   THE  BELIGION   OF   IDEALISM  17 

and  moral  strivings  of  men.  The  story  of  his  life  is  in  the  develop- 
ment of  humanity  out  of  slavery  to  natural,  sensuous  impulses  and 
into  the  life  of  reason  as  revealed  in  the  stern  call  of  social  duty. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  spiritual  pantheism  of  this  sort  is  a  new 
kind  of  philosophical  religion.  It  is  new  because  it  represents  God 
as  being  inside  the  world  instead  of  outside  it,  and  because  it  identifies 
God  with  the  spiritual  life  of  man  instead  of  separating  him  in  ab- 
stract, lonely  grandeur,  from  any  concerns  of  humankind.  We 
recognize  it  as  pJiilosophical  religion  because  it  is  the  result  of  specu- 
lation and  stands  or  falls  with  the  intellectualistic  postulates  upon 
which  it  rests.  Just  as  the  validity  of  theism  and  deism  depends 
upon  the  autonomy  of  the  mind  in  dealing  with  ideas  that  lie  beyond 
the  possibility  of  experiential  testing,  just  so  the  religion  of  post- 
Kantian  Idealism  depends  upon  the  justification  of  the  mind's  read- 
ing into  the  sum-total  of  the  phenomena  of  experience,  a  conception 
of  unity  and  purpose  that  equally  lies  beyond  the  possibility  of  ex- 
periential testing.  And,  finally,  it  is  religion  because  it  represents  a 
formulation  of  the  current  sense  of  values — human,  social,  democratic 
values — as  set  into  the  matrix  of  a  consistent  intellectual  background. 

The  story  of  German  Idealism  shows  that  Fichte's  system  was 
not  satisfactory  on  the  grounds  of  intellectual  consistency,  as  it  did 
not  take  sufficient  account  of  that  order  of  experience  which  is  obvi- 
ously independent  of  human  wishes  and  notoriously  unresponsive  to 
human  efforts.  In  Hegel  we  get  the  first  full  flowering  of  the  ideal- 
istic movement,  and  it  is  to  him  that  we  turn  for  a  more  complete 
exposition. 

2.  Hegel 

The  groundwork  and  the  limit  of  Hegel 's  speculation  is  the  realm 
of  experience;  by  the  adoption  of  which  conditions,  he  shows  him- 
self the  lineal  descendant  of  Kant.  But  in  the  life  that  he  reads  into 
experience,  he  is  far  enough  removed  from  the  spirit  of  the  Critical 
Philosophy.  "Whereas  Kant  sets  up  a  realm  of  potential  experience, 
Hegel  posits  an  Absolute  experience:  the  world  for  him  is  a  living 
Spirit. 

Kant  describes  the  world  of  possible  experience  as  created  through 
the  cooperation  of  human  individuals,  and  the  categories  were  for 
him  the  inner  constitution  of  human,  individual  experience.  Hegel 
uses  the  same  world  as  Kant's  world  of  possible  experience,  but  it  has 
its  life  and  existence  prior  to  the  point  where  the  experience  of  human 
individuals  collaborates  in  the  development  of  self-consciousness. 
Taking  the  universe  over  all,  according  to  Hegel  it  exhibits  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  living,  conscious,  and  self-conscious  experience.     It 


18       BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

possesses  constituent  relations,  or  categories,  ready-formed  within  it ; 
it  finds  content  in  the  sense  objects  of  a  physical  order,  and  it  pos- 
sesses self-consciousness  of  the  inner  unity  of  the  apparently  diverse 
aspects  of  form  and  content.  This  conception  of  the  nature  of  the 
spirit-life  of  the  universe  takes  account  of  a  triangular  framework 
within  w^hich  there  is  exercised  continual  activity  and  initiative. 
The  three  sides  of  the  triangle  are  Being,  Nature,  and  Spirit.  Being 
may  be  described  as  the  original  life  of  the  world-self.  It  has  a  devel- 
opment of  its  own  and  a  variety  and  wealth  of  self-expression. 
Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Being  presents  the  constituent  character  of 
the  spirit-life  of  the  Universe,  which  may  be  said  to  correspond  to 
the  Kantian  categories;  but,  whereas  for  Kant  the  categories  are 
discoverable  upon  analysis  of  experience,  for  Hegel  they  possess  an 
independent  and  necessary  life  of  their  own.  The  life  of  Being 
begins  in  the  simplest  and  most  abstract  category,  Being,  and  develops 
successively  into  the  categories  of  Becoming,  Quantity,  Quality,  and 
so  forth,  up  to  the  richest  and  most  inclusive  category,  the  Absolute 
Idea. 

The  second  side  of  the  triangle  is  Nature,  which  represents  a 
continuation  of  the  self-development  of  Absolute  Spirit.  Nature  is 
the  necessary  complement  of  the  categories,  for  without  objectifica- 
tion  in  a  concrete  experience,  the  framework  of  that  experience 
would  be  null  and  empty.  Nature,  as  well  as  Being,  possesses  a  rich 
and  self-connected  life  that  is  in  process  of  development. 

The  third  side  of  the  triangle  is  Spirit,  as  exhibited  in  the  con- 
sciou>sness  of  human  beings.  It  is  at  once  a  culmination  of  the  life  of 
the  Absolute  Self  and  a  return  upon  itself  of  the  entire  process  of 
self-development  of  the  Idea.  For  in  the  self -consciousness  of 
humanity  the  process  becomes  known  for  what  it  is,  and  thereby 
alone  is  made  what  it  really  is,  namely,  the  absolute  and  indivisible 
unity  of  a  spiritual  life. 

With  the  appearance  of  consciousness  in  the  human  individual, 
the  World-Spirit  has  produced  a  being  which  approximates  its  own 
nature.  Man  is  self-conscious  and  free.  At  first  concerned  only  with 
the  recognition  and  assertion  of  its  own  individuality,  the  life  of  the 
Spirit  is  Subjective ;  but  with  the  recognition  of  the  rights  of  others 
and  the  appearance  of  the  social  bond,  Spirit  has  entered  into  a 
higher  plane,  that  of  Objectivity.  Rights  of  others  come  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  personal  concern  of  the  individual,  and  these  rights  are 
secured  by  means  of  law.  Still  higher  stages  of  the  development  of 
the  Idea  in  Objective  Spirit  are  found  in  the  self-motivation  to  good 
on  the  part  of  the  individual,  irrespective  of  law,  and  in  the  reduc- 
tion of  social-minded  action  to  group  habit,  or  custom.     Objective 


MODEEN   VALUES  AND   THE  RELIGION   OF  IDEALISM  19 

Spirit  has  run  its  full  course  when  men  live  together  in  peace  and 
harmony  under  institutions  that  guarantee  the  free  development  of 
the  individual  and  are  only  the  codification  and  objective  statement 
of  what  the  needs  of  the  individual  demand. 

The  third  and  final  phase  of  Idea  within  the  stage  of  Spirit  repre- 
sents the  complete  return  of  the  Absolute  upon  itself  in  the  experi- 
ence of  individual  men.  There  are  three  phases  of  Absolute  Spirit, 
namely,  art,  religion,  and  philosophy.  In  art,  Spirit  is  striving  for 
self-expression  in  material  forms, — in  rock  and  mortar,  clay,  marble, 
colors,  sounds,  letters.  Art  is  always  conscious  of  its  failure  to  embody 
its  conception :  the  outer  reality  is  obstinate  and  ultimately  victori- 
ous. In  religion,  the  strivings  of  the  human  spirit  win  their  own, 
for  the  religious  experience  passes  immediately  over  the  material 
obstacles  lying  between  it  and  its  self-expression  and  posits  spirit  as 
superior  to  things.  And,  finally.  Spirit  Absolute,  through  the  insight 
of  philosophy,  combines  the  reach  of  art  with  the  grasp  of  religion 
and  sees  things  and  ideals  as  mutually  complementary.  Both  are 
necessary  aspects  of  an  Absolute  Idea  that  expresses  itself  in  the 
dual  role  of  conception  and  fact. 

In  our  attempt  to  describe  the  general  form  of  Hegel's  philos- 
ophy, it  has  been  impossible  to  ignore  the  principle  of  movement 
that  is  exhibited  throughout.  If  reality_is  a  triangle  whose  sides 
are  Being,  Nature,  and  Spirit,  it  is  a  self -tracing  and  living  triangle. 
Eeality  is  a  development,  and  its  three  aspects  are  moments  within 
a  process.  In  this  day  when  evolution  is  a  commonplace  conception, 
it  is  necessary  to  understand  clearly  the  kind  of  evolution  of  the 
Absolute  Life  that  Hegel  had  in  mind.  In  defiance  of  the  danger  of 
repetition,  we  may  say  that  Hegel  conceives  of  Being  as  the  first 
stage  in  the  development  of  the  Absolute  Life,  the  world  of  Nature  as 
the  second,  and  the  life  of  Spirit  as  the  third  and  last.  Yet  he  does 
not  think  of  Being  as  causing  Nature,  nor  of  Nature  as  causing 
Spirit.  While  Being  is  prior  in  existence  to  Nature,  and  Nature  to 
Spirit,  these  relations  of  priority  and  succession  are  only  the  exi- 
gencies of  the  inner  life  of  the  Absolute.  As  long  as  Hegel  is  work- 
ing with  Pure  Being,  there  is  a  natural  relationship  of  necessity  in 
the  way  in  which  one  conception  passes  over  into  its  opposite  and 
combines  with  it  on  a  higher  plane  of  self-expression.  But  when  he 
passes  out  of  the  realm  of  Pure  Being  into  the  world  of  physical 
nature  and  human  beings,  the  causal  leadings  between  successive 
manifestations  of  t^e  Absolute  are  lacking.  The  development,  while 
recognized  as  progress,  is  from  within.  It  takes  place  in  the  private 
subjective  life  of  the  Absolute;  and  the  successive  forms  are  only 
the  laying  bare  to  human  eyes  of  its  inner  urge  and  necessity  of 
seeking  self-expression. 


20       BELIGIOUS   VALUES  AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

Hegel's  philosophy  is  meant  to  serve  as  a  religion.  To  be  sure, 
he  makes  a  distinction  between  philosophy  and  religion,  saying  that 
religion  is  reason  thinking  naively.  But  he  continually  leaves  the 
religious  expression  behind  and  speaks  in  terms  of  his  philosophy. 
And,  after  all,  it  is  his  philosophy  that  is  his  religion,  for  it  is  only 
after  one  has  comprehended  the  figurative  language  of  religion  in  its 
philosophical  meaning  that  it  can  be  acceptable  to  him.  He  says: 
* '  God  exists  only  for  the  man  who  thinks,  who  keeps  within  the  quiet 
of  his  own  mind.  The  ancients  called  this  enthusiasm;  it  is  pure 
theoretic  contemplation,  the  supreme  repose  of  thought,  but  at  the 
same  time  its  highest  activity  manifested  in  grasping  the  pure  Idea 
of  God  and  becoming  conscious  of  this  Idea."^  This  preference  for 
the  rigorously  philosophical  point  of  view  is  further  illustrated  in 
the  discussion  to  follow, 

Hegel  believed  that  religion  was  essentially  a  knowing  relation, 
and  that,  as  such,  an  object  of  knowledge  was  required.  He  says: 
"If  something  objective  is  to  be  really  recognized,  it  is  requisite  that 
I  should  be  determined  as  universal,  and  should  maintain  myself  as 
universal  only.  Now  this  is  none  other  than  the  point  of  view  of 
thinking  reason,  and  of  the  man  who  thinks  rationally, — who  as  indi- 
vidual posits  himself  as  Universal,  and  annulling  himself  as  indi- 
vidual, finds  his  true  self  to  be  the  Universal.  Philosophy  is  in  like 
manner  thinking  reason,  only  that  this  action  in  which  religion  con- 
sists appears  in  philosophy  in  the  form  of  thought,  while  religion  as, 
so  to  speak,  reason  thinking  naively,  stops  short  in  the  sphere  of 
general  ideas,  or  ordinary  thought."^  "The  standpoint  of  religion 
is  this,  that  the  true,  to  which  consciousness  relates  itself,  has  all 
content  in  itself,  and  consequently  this  condition  of  relation  is  what 
is  highest  of  all  in  it,  is  its  Absolute  standpoint.  "^  "  The  true  home 
of  religion  is  absolute  consciousness,  and  this  implies  that  God  is 
himself  all  content,  all  tnith  and  reality."* 

Most  comprehensively  taken,  religion  for  Hegel  is  no  more  nor  I 
less  than  the  finite  individual's  recognition  of  his  own  participation 
in  the  life  of  the  Absolute.  The  finite  individual  is  nothing  in  him- 
self, for  his  reality  is  indissolubly  joined  with  that  of  the  Absolute ; 
hut  he  is  something  in  himself  because  he  represents  the  particulariza-  j 
tion  of  the  Absolute  and  is  essential  to  its  self-realization,  Hegel 
says,  * '  Religion  is  therefore  a  relation  of  the  spirit  to  absolute  Spirit : 
thus  only  is  spirit  as  that  which  knows  also  that  which  is  known. 

1"  Philosophy  of  Eeligion,"  tr.  Speira  and  Sanderson,  III.,  p.  11. 

2  Id.,  193-94, 

3  Id.,  204. 

4  Id.,  205. 


il. 


MODEBN   VALUES  AND   THE  BELIGION  OF  IDEALISM  21 

This  is  not  merely  an  attitude  of  the  spirit  towards  absolute  Spirit, 
but  absolute  Spirit  itself  is  that  which  is  the  self-relating  element, 
which  brings  itself  into  relation  with  that  which  we  posited  on  the 
other  side  as  the  element  of  difference.  Thus  when  we  rise  higher, 
religion  is  the  Idea  of  the  Spirit  which  relates  itself  to  its  own  self — 
it  is  the  self-consciousness  of  absolute  Spirit."^  Or  again,  "Reli- 
gion is  the  Divine  Spirit's  knowledge  of  itself  through  the  mediation 
of  finite  spirit.  Accordingly,  in  its  highest  form,  religion  is  not  a 
transaction  of  man,  but  it  is  essentially  the  highest  determination  of 
the  absolute  Idea  itself. '  '^  The  emphasis  is  thus  seen  to  be  put  upon  , 
the  fact  that  God  is  not  a  Being,  independent  of  human  experience,  ' 
as  is  the  God  of  dogmatic  theology.  On  the  contrary,  God  is  always 
produced  through  the  medium  of  individual  minds  and  only  so.  He 
is  spirit,  at  once  human  and  divine. 

In  the  act  of  worship,  the  finite  spirit  is  lifted  up,  says  Hegel, 
to  a  conscious  recognition  of  his  oneness  with  the  absolute  Spirit, 
while  retaining  his  sense  of  individuality,  "The  finite  in  relation  to 
the  Infinite  is  posited  as  the  negative,  the  dependent,  that  which 
melts  away  in  relation  to  the  Infinite.  When  the  two  are  brought 
together,  a  unity  comes  into  existence  through  the  abolition  and 
absorption  of  the  finite  in  fact,  which  can  not  maintain  itself  against 
the  Infinite.  .  .  .  On  the  one  hand,  I  determine  myself  as  the  finite ; 
on  the  other,  I  am  not  annihilated  in  the  relation, — I  relate  myself 
to  myself.  I  am,  I  subsist ;  I  am  also  the  Affirmative.  On  the  one 
side  I  know  myself  as  having  no  real  existence;  on  the  other,  as 
affirmative,  as  having  a  valid  existence,  so  that  the  infinite  leaves  me 
my  own  life."^  "If  I  now  go  further  and  begin  to  consider  the 
matter  from  a  spiritually  higher  standpoint  of  consciousness,  I  find 
myself  no  longer  observing,  but  I  forget  myself  in  entering  into  the 
object;  I  bury  myself  in  it,  while  I  strive  to  know,  to  understand 
God ;  I  yield  myself  up  to  it,  and  if  I  do  this  I  am  no  longer  in  the 
attitude  of  empirical  consciousness,  of  observation.  If  God  is  no 
longer  to  me  a  something  above  and  beyond  me,  I  am  no  longer  a  pure 
observer."^  "All  particularity  belongs  to  it  (the  Universal  Object)  ; 
as  universal  it  overlaps  or  includes  me  in  itself,  and  thus  I  look  upon 
myself  as  finite,  as  being  a  moment  in  this  life,  as  that  which  has  its 
particidar  being,  its  permanent  existence,  in  this  substance  only,  and 
in  its  essential  moments."^  To  recapitulate,  as  I  worship,  I  recog- 
nize both  my  separate  individuality  and  my  unity  with  God,  while  my 
sense  of  weakness,  finitude,  and  unworthiness  is  swallowed  up  in  the 
realization  of  my  oneness  with  the  infinite  selfhood  known  as  God. 

5  Id.,  1.,  205.  7  Id.,  174. 

6  Id.,  206.  8  Id.,  I.,  176. 
9  Id.,  I.,  197. 


22       BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

It  is  easily  seen  from  the  foregoing  that  Hegel's  philosophy  of 
religion  is  only  a  reduplication  of  the  main  outlines  of  his  entire? 
philosophy.  Indeed,  his  interpretation  of  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity, 
which  he  recognizes  as  fundamental  in  Christianity,  the  Absolute 
Religion,  is  only  a  restatement  of  the  divisions  of  the  great  triad, 
Being,  Nature,  and  Spirit.  We  may,  accordingly,  sum  up  Hegel's  . 
understanding  of  religion  in  saying  that  the  individual,  who  is  at  ^ 
once  the  embodiment  and  the  self-expression  of  the  Absolute,  is  in  a 
religious  frame  of  mind  and  takes  on  an  attitude  of  worship,  when 
he  recognizes  himself  in  his  absolute  and  universal  capacity.  The 
valjies  that  Hegel  takes  account  of  are  those  of  the  modem  Western 
world.  He  puts  a  positive  valuation  upon  life  and  effort  and  self- 
expression.  His  ethical  ideals  are  social,  for  he  says  that  only  as  man 
coerces  his  impulsive,  self-aggrandizing  tendencies  in  the  interest  of 
the  social  whole,  is  he  truly  good.  Institutions  and  laws  are  the 
embodiment  of  the  principles  of  most  advantageous  self-expression  in 
community  and  national  existence;  and  the  philosophy  of  history  is 
just  the  record  of  successive  development  of  the  Absolute  into  more 
and  more  adequate  forms,  culminating  in  such  institutions  as  repre- 
sent wholly  and  perfectly  the  balance  between  the  rights  and  the 
obligations  of  the  citizens  of  the  state. 

If  the  philosophy  of  Hegel  is  a  satisfactory  intellectual  setting 
for  the  accepted  values  of  his  experience,  and  represents  those  values 
as  a  consistent  part  of  the  reality  which  his  philosophy  describes,  we 
must  say  that  it  is,  in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word  a  religion. 

Does  Hegel's  Philosophy  Exhibit  Intellectual  Consistency? 

We  have  endeavored  to  maintain  throughout  this  paper  that 
there  must  be  self-consistency  in  the  intellectual  description  of  reality 
if  it  is  to  be  competent  to  bear  the  treasure  of  human  values.  In  our 
study  of  Hegel,  we  have  witnessed  his  deliberate  attempt  to  set  forth 
an  interpretation  of  reality  that  is  intellectually  consistent  in  all  its 
parts  and  that,  at  the  same  time,  embodies  the  values  of  our  Western 
life.  It  is  our  present  purpose  to  consider  his  system  from  the  stand- 
point of  its  success  in  giving  us  an  account  of  reality  that  is 
sufficiently  satisfying  intellectually  to  enable  it  to  support  the  ele- 
ment of  value. 

At  the  expense  of  some  repetition,  we  may  say  that  Hegel's 
philosophy  takes  account  of  three  positions.  The  first  of  these  is 
equivalent  to  the  Kantian  ego-machinery,  the  categories.  The  second 
is  concrete,  objective  experience,  living  nature.  The  third  is  the  self- 
conscious  awareness  of  the  reciprocity  that  exists  between  the  first 


MODERN   VALVES  AND   THE  RELIGION   OF  IDEALISM  23 

two  positions,  or  the  self-realization  of  the  Idea  in  human  con- 
sciousnesses. 

The  network  of  relations,  or  categories,  that  Hegel  develops,  con- 
stitutes the  nature  and  substance  of  Being,  and  in  all  the  particular- 
ity of  its  inner  life  represents  the  first  stage  of  the  life  of  the  World- 
Self.  Furthermore  it  is  said  to  exist  logically  prior  to  the  diversity 
and  the  particularity  that  constitute  its  Other-of  Self,  the  world  of 
nature  and  living  things.  But  if  one  accepts  a  fact  basis  and  utilizes 
the  most  authoritative  knowledge  available  in  the  present  generation, 
he  must  recognize  consciousness  as  a  development,  as  something  that 
came  into  existence  as  consciousness  from  non-existence  as  con- 
sciousness. Granted  the  presence  of  experience,  it  may  be  analyzed 
and  its  subjective  and  objective  phases  may  be  exhibited  as  the 
opposite  and  complementary  aspects  of  reality.  For  example,  I 
recognize  cause  and  effect  as  one  of  the  never-absent  conditions  of 
the  experience  I  possess.  We  may  call  it,  to  be  consistent  with  his- 
torical usage,  a  category  of  our  experience.  We  further  recognize 
cause  and  effect  as  an  aspect  of  objective  reality,  or  experience  as 
viewed  from  an  opposite  and  external  standpoint.  Now,  if  Hegel's 
classification  of  the  categories  as  given  in  the  "Logic,"  means 
anything,  it  means  that  he  is  pointing  out  the  universal,  underlying 
characteristics  of  experience.  As  such,  his  work  is  analagous  to 
that  of  the  grammarian  who  exhibits  the  forms  or  principles  under- 
lying speech,  or  that  of  the  logician  who  exhibits  the  possible  com- 
binations used  in  practical  and  concrete  thinking.  Ostensibly, 
Hegel  found  his  categories  of  Being  before  a  true  self  appeared  and 
quite  independent  of  experience  as  had  in  and  by  a  human  self. 
Actually,  he  was  analyzing  out  the  general  relations  that  are  dis- 
coverable in  concrete  experience.  Granted  that  his  analysis  is  cor- 
rect, it  means  no  more  than  that  he  has  reduced  to  definite  and 
nameable  form  an  abstruse  phase  of  experience.  The  categories  are 
implicit  in  experience,  and  it  is  a  task  of  investigation  to  make  them 
explicit.  As  such,  the  procedure  is  scientific  and  subject  to  revision 
after  more  satisfactory  analysis. 

However,  Hegel  claims  much  more  for  his  work  in  connection 
with  the  categories  than  the  facts  seem  to  warrant.  He  thinks  df 
his  results  as  going  beyond  experience ;  the  categories  are  the  consti- 
tution and  make-up  of  Being  prior  to  the  existence  of  the  only  kind 
of  experience  that  we  are  able  to  find.  The  stage  of  Being,  with  all 
its  show  of  life,  depends  for  its  existence  upon  a  condition  to  which, 
for  him,  it  is  logically  prior.  Hegel 's  Being  is  the  shadow  of  experi- 
ence; but  in  his  system,  the  shadow  exists  before  the  thing  it 
shadows.    If  one  proceeds  with  a  due  regard  for  experience  and  at- 


24        BELIGIOUS   VALUES  AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

tempts  to  find  its  prius,  he  encounters  a  nexus  of  biolo^eal  forces 
and  a  sum  of  chemical  equations,  which  in  turn  possess  meaning 
only  in  terms  of  the  same  experience  that  was  to  be  explained. 
Accordingly,  it  does  not  seem  too  much  to  say  that  Hegel  has  nx) 
basis  of  fact  for  his  forcible  disjunction  of  the  categories  of  Being 
from  that  actual  experience  in  which  they  are  discoverable.  And, 
furthermore,  if  he  is  not  justified  in  his  diremption  of  what  he  calls 
Being  from  its  natural  and  necessary  objective  counterpart,  then  his 
treatment  of  the  latter,  under  the  heading  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Nature,  suffers  equally  from  the  fault  of  "  abstractness, "  in  the  sense 
of  his  own  pet  aversion.  And,  finally,  the  third  phase  of  his  system, 
the  Philosophy  of  Spirit,  with  its  work  of  connecting  the  first  two, 
is  left  without  any  moments  to  fuse  and  conjoin,  and  consequently 
becomes  functionless. 

Not  less  slow  to  exhibit  its  limitations  than  the  place  of  the  cate- 
gories in  Hegel's  system,  is  his  speculative,  unempirical  formula  of 
evolution  when  strictly  applied  to  the  facts  of  history.  It  is,  of 
course,  not  to  be  considered  a  condemnation  of  Hegel  to  say  and  to 
prove  that  his  conception  of  the  evolution  of  Idea  is  hypothetical. 
Science  lives  by  hypotheses,  and  philosophy  may  find  a  use  for  them 
as  well.  But  the  temper  of  the  intellectual  life  changes  from  time  to 
time,  and  what  was  once  a  satisfactory  sort  of  hypothesis  is  no 
longer  regarded  as  such.  Kepler  might  think,  in  his  early  years, 
of  angels  as  responsible  for  the  orderly  movements  of  the  planets, 
but  such  an  hypothesis  is  laughed  at  to-day.  The  same  change  of 
attitude  has  affected  Hegel's  hypothesis.  It  was  the  product  of  a 
romantic  age,  and  had  its  fellow  in  Goethe 's  Zeitgeist.  Even  to-day 
it  has  its  value  when  we  recognize  its  poetic  origin  and  quality ;  for 
it  is  undeniably  a  stirring  conception  to  think  of  the  changes  of 
nature  and  human  institutions  as  the  life  of  a  World-Spirit.  But 
we  recognize  the  figure  as  a  figure ;  and  when  we  use  it  we  know  that 
we  are  dealing  in  terms  of  poetry  and  not  in  terms  of  fact.  As 
poetry,  even  though  rather  crabbed  and  pedantic  poetry,  we  must 
recognize  the  worth  of  Hegel's  world-conception;  for  its  scope  and 
sweep  are  universal;  it  is  epic  in  its  subject-matter  and  in  its  pro- 
portions. But  as  scientific  hypothesis,  demanding  respect  and  belief, 
it  simply  no  longer  makes  an  appeal. 

Hegel's  conception  of  evolution  is  in  reality  not  an  evolution  in 
the  sense  in  which  we  have  come  to  use  the  term.  It  is  rather  a  series 
of  aspects  of  a  changing  subject-matter.  The  unity  is  conceived  from 
without  and  externally  imposed.  The  development  is  not  develop- 
ment within  the  subject-matter,  but  of  the  schema. 

It  is  essential  to  the  development  of  a  drama  that  the  characters 


MODEBN   VALUES  AND   THE  BELIGION  OF  IDEALISM  25 

exhibit  development  either  in  their  circumstances  or  in  their  atti- 
tudes. The  same  individuals  must  be  continued  through  succeeding 
acts.  It  would  hardly  be  called  a  play  if  each  scene  or  act  should 
introduce  new  characters,  allowing  the  old  characters  to  continue 
side  by  side  with  them,  altogether  indifferent  to  the  actions  and  the 
attitudes  of  the  new  company  of  players.  A  drama  must  be  more 
than  a  mere  succession  of  unrelated  panoramas.  And  yet,  Hegel's 
drama  of  the  Idea  is  simply  that, — a  succession  of  panoramas.  The 
stages  of  Nature,  namely.  Mechanics,  Chemism  and  Organics,  do  not 
develop  into  one  another,  but  exist  side  by  side.  Subjective,  Objec- 
tive, and  Absolute  Spirit  do  not  successively  disappear  into  one 
another:  there  is  no  reciprocity,  no  give  and  take  among  them,  but 
only  the  exhibition  of  succeeding  phases  along  with  the  continuance 
of  the  older.  For  example,  the  religion  of  sorcery  (China)  does  not 
develop  into  the  religion  of  phantasy  (Brahminism),  nor  does 
Brahminism  change  gradually  into  the  religion  of  inner  contempla- 
tion (Buddhism).  The  religions  of  Nature  in  general  do  not  develop 
into  the  religions  of  Freedom.  The  former  were  and  even  now  are, 
after  these  thousands  of  years.  Nothing  about  them  is  taken  up  and 
modified  into  that  which  succeeds  them.  They  exist  and  are  evaluated 
by  Hegel,  and  other  religions  in  turn  come  into  being  and  are 
evaluated;  and  when  the  course  of  history  has  been  traversed,  the 
catalogue  of  religions  is  susceptible  of  arrangement  and  classification 
according  to  Hegel's  preconceived  principle.  Of  evolution,  meaning 
transformation  and  development  of  a  given  conception,  or  organiza- 
tion, or  institution,  there  is  none. 

What  is  more,  Hegel's  schema  does  violence  to  the  facts,  omitting 
details  that  do  not  fit  in  and  supplying  others  to  fill  out  the  arbitrary 
diagram.  A  good  example  of  Hegel's  partiality  in  choosing  facts  is 
his  failure  to  take  any  account  of  the  Mohammedan  religion.  His 
classification  of  religions  falls  into  three  heads:  the  Oriental  objec- 
tive religions,  in  which  God  in  Nature  stands  over  against  the  human 
individual;  the  Religions  of  Freedom,  in  which  man  reads  his  sub- 
jective nature  into  the  Godhood;  and  the  Absolute  Religion  of 
Christian  revelation,  where  God  as  object  expresses  himself  in  human 
spirit,  thereby  combining  and  synthesizing  objectivity  and  subjectiv- 
ity in  an  indivisible  unity  of  self-experience.  In  the  course  of 
development  as  historically  exhibited,  Mohammedanism  should  be  the 
cope-stone  of  the  structure,  but  this  stone  which  should  be  the  head 
of  the  corner  is  never  noticed  by  Hegel. 

A  further  example  of  what  the  writer  regards  as  partiality  in 
arranging  his  facts  on  the  part  of  Hegel,  occurs  in  his  classification 
of  the  religions.    It  seems  evident  that  the  Hebrew  religion  of  the 


26       SELIGIOUS   VALUES  AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

prophetic  period  is  the  nearest  approach  to  the  religion  of  Jesus, 
called  by  Hegel  the  Absolute  Religion,  of  any  that  we  have  record  of. 
Indeed,  Jesus  builds  upon  the  Hebrew  religion,  using  it  as  his  founda- 
tion. He  averred  that  it  was  his  intention  and  purpose  to  bring  new 
life  into  the  "law"  of  his  day  by  infusing  into  it  the  true  spirit  of 
prophetic  religion.  Hegel,  however,  tracing  a  line  of  historical 
development,  interposed  both  the  Greek  and  the  Roman  religions 
between  the  Hebrew  and  the  Christian.  Rather  would  it  seem  that 
the  frank  naturalism  of  the  Greek  mythology,  with  its  immature 
ethics,  and  the  formalism  of  the  Roman  pantheon,  are  in  no  sense 
logical  forerunners  of  the  exalted  spirituality  of  Christ's  teachings 
about  the  nature  of  God. 

Hegel  may  be  said  to  have  tried  to  use  an  evolutionary  hypoth- 
esis in  the  interests  of  a  perfectionist  plan  of  reality.  He  has  put 
a  descriptive  instrument  of  modern  science  to  work  as  a  teleological 
agency.  It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  the  philosophy  of  Hegel  en- 
counters difficulty  and  exhibits  ambiguity  and  inconsistency  when  it 
undertakes  to  force  contingently  developing  circumstances  into  the 
rigid  moulds  of  a  preconceived  logical  schema.  For  evolution,  as  a 
descriptive  formula,  is  quite  independent  of  final  causes ;  and  changes 
occur  both  for  the  worse  and  for  the  better,  as  we  express  our  judg- 
ment from  a  given  and  prejudiced  standpoint.  Furthermore,  quite 
apart  from  the  question  of  moral  purpose,  Hegel  considers  the  evolu- 
tion taking  place  in  the  physical,  organic,  and  social  world,  as  the  out- 
ward expression  of  the  changes  of  the  internal,  subjective  volition  of 
the  Absolute,  which,  in  the  hidden  depths  of  its  life,  evolves  accord- 
ing to  its  perfect  character.  But  evolution,  as  science  can  under- 
stand it,  always  takes  place  on  the  fact  plane,  the  plane  of  phenomena. 
There  is  true  evolution  in  the  preparation,  by  means  of  mechanical 
and  physical  forces,  for  organic  life,  and  the  passing  over  of  mechan- 
ical and  chemical  forms  into  organic  existence.  But  it  is  the  phe- 
nomenal materials  that  register  and  undergo  the  changes.  There  is 
development  from  Brahminism  into  Buddhism,  but  it  is  the  exi- 
gencies of  experience  that  bring  about  the  new  adjustment.  There 
is  evolution  of  the  Hebrew  religion,  but  it  takes  place  on  the  plane  of 
experience  as  seen  in  economic,  or  political,  or  ethical,  or  intellectual 
changes,  or  in  all  four  together.  But  such  evolution  is  not  of  an  inner 
core  of  reality ;  rather  is  it  of  human  experience  facing  incomplete- 
ness and  dissatisfaction  and  going  on  to  something  new  and  different 
that  fills  up  the  lack. 

In  conclusion  of  our  discussion  of  the  philosophical  religion  of 
Hegel,  we  may  say  that  the  intellectual  setting  for  the  system  of 
values  that  we  believe  in  with  him,  is  unsatisfactory.    He  has  tran- 


MODERN   VALVES  AND   THE  RELIGION   OF   IDEALISM  27 

scended  the  fact-world  to  find  an  interpreter  of  reality,  and,  as  a 
result,  his  interpreter  does  not  speak  the  sober  language  of  fact. 
Where  Hegel  raises  the  characteristics  of  phenomenal  human  experi- 
ence to  Absolute  heights,  those  characteristics  fall  to  their  proper 
level  because  they  have  no  support  of  fact;  and  where  he  attempts 
to  confine  the  infinitely  rich  and  waywardly  contingent  life  of  phe- 
nomenal experience  to  his  preconceived,  Absolute  forms,  it  over- 
flows his  schema. 

3.   Royce 

In  the  philosophy  of  Hegel,  we  have  seen  the  logical  completion 
of  a  movement  of  thought  that  considered  reality  in  its  physical, 
psychical,  and  social  aspects  as  the  expression  and  the  embodiment  of 
a  single  life  striving  for  fullness  of  truth,  goodness,  and  beauty. 
Hegel's  method  was  to  try  to  embody  within  his  system  the  concrete 
life  of  nature  and  man  and  nations;  and  we  have  been  at  some 
pains  to  show  why  we  believe  that  the  concrete  reality  he  was  de- 
scribing does  not  fit  into  his  logical  forms  except  with  a  very  large 
remainder.  It  was  at  once  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  his 
philosophy  that  it  attempted  to  be  specifically  concrete.  Its  strength, 
because  in  making  of  the  drama  of  cosmic  and  human  history  the 
developing  selfhood  of  the  Absolute  Life,  it  invested  with  eternal  and 
absolute  significance  the  daily  actions  of  finite  beings  and  showed  the 
meaning  of  each  finite  aspect  of  reality  to  be  connected  with  its  true 
existence  in  the  living  whole.  Its  weakness,  because,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  facts  of  our  experience  of  men  and  nature  are  too  diverse  and 
contradictory  to  fall  into  the  pattern  of  a  single  developing  self- 
consciousness,  and,  because,  on  the  other  hand,  in  order  to  keep  in 
touch  with  facts,  the  schema  intended  to  include  them  is  made 
purely  hypothetical  and  fails  to  exhibit  any  analogy  with  seKhood 
as  we  can  understand  that  concept. 

The  development  of  Hegelianism  at  the  hands  of  Hegel's  fol- 
lowers has  been  in  the  direction  of  inner  self-consistency  with  the 
analogy  of  selfhood.  Finding  it  impossible  to  account  for  the  vari- 
ety of  human  experience  in  all  its  concrete  beauty  and  ugliness, 
goodness  and  evil,  truth  and  error,  and  to  arrange  the  facts  of  experi- 
ence in  accordance  with  a  logical  schema  such  as  Hegel's,  they  have 
emphasized  the  rational  necessity  of  a  certain  Absolute  constitution 
of  experience  and  have  let  concrete  details  shift  for  themselves. 
We  may  say  with  reference  to  this  philosophical  tendency  that  we 
believe  that  the  distortion  of  fact  necessary  to  meet  an  idealistic  pro- 
gramme is  so  pronounced  as  to  vitiate  the  logical  advantages  it  pos- 
sesses, through  its  reduction  of  all  experience  to  a  dead  and  mean- 


28       BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

ingless  formalism.     As  an  example  of  this  later  form  of  Absolute 
Idealism,  we  have  chosen  the  philosophy  of  Josiah  Royce. 

Royce  describes  reality  in  terms  of  experience,  and  his  dialectic 
in  opposition  to  realism  and  mysticism  is  certainly  in  the  interests  of 
true  philosophy.  For  objects  that  can  be  known  at  all  are  in  experi- 
ence and  can  never  be  considered  understandingly  as  outside  of 
experience.  This,  of  course,  implies  that  there  is  an  inner  and 
indivisible  bond  between  the  object  known  and  the  experience  for 
which  it  is  an  object  at  all.  Likewise,  the  direct  intuition  of  the 
mystic  is  a  complete  negation,  for  it  pretends  to  be  independent  of 
the  experience  series.  If  Realism  represents  an  aggressive  denial  of 
the  original  and  necessary  setting  of  objects  within  experience^ 
mysticism  represents  an  elusive  escape  from  such  an  enmeshment. 
The  true  object  of  knowledge,  for  the  mystic,  lies  beneath  the 
troubled  waters  of  experience.  The  whorls  and  the  bubbles  that 
mark  the  spot  of  its  disappearance  are  the  only  evidence  of  its 
existence;  but  who,  then,  shall  say  that  the  object  is  at  all?  For 
the  whorls  are  naught  and  the  bubbles  are  naught :  indeed,  the  whole 
wide  sea  is  nothingness.  Certainly,  philosophy  can  not  deal  with  a 
reality  that  is  always  just  beyond  the  vanishing  point  and  denies 
the  evidence  of  its  own  disappearance. 

But  if  reality  is  not  to  be  defined  either  in  terms  of  realism 
or  in  terms  of  mysticism  on  the  grounds  that  both  these  forms  of 
speculation  deny  the  fundamental  conditions  of  our  experience  of 
objects,  we  must  find  a  means  of  representing  reality  that  will  have 
due  regard  for  the  matrix  of  experience  out  of  which  and  into 
which  the  object  is  born.  The  most  obvious  method  to  follow  at 
this  point  is  just  to  postulate  the  object  as  a  form  of  experience  and 
nothing  more.  The  sun  is  just  as  warming,  just  as  large,  occupies 
just  the  same  position  with  regard  to  the  earth  and  the  other  planets 
and  heavenly  bodies,  wheels  through  space  just  as  unerringly,  and 
meets  our  astronomical  expectations  just  as  satisfactorily,  if  we  think 
of  its  reality  as  summed  up  in  these  empirical  manifestations,  as  it 
would  if  it  had  a  different  sort  of  reality  that  could  not  be  made 
consistent  with  the  conditions  of  knowledge.  And  so  with  all  the 
realm  that  we  describe  in  terms  of  physical  science  and  the  world  of 
sociology  and  history.  That  the  facts  we  know  are  more  than  our 
facts;  that  experience  implies  more  than  experience;  that  reality  as 
it  is  known  and  reality  as  it  exists  are  possibly  two  different  things, — 
philosophy  is  simply  content  to  leave  on  one  side  as  irrelevant  ques- 
tions. For  what  does  it  profit  the  philosopher  to  go  beyond  the  mate- 
rials that  are  amply  sufficient  to  give  him  an  orderly,  regular  world, 
in  which  scientific  laws  reign,  in  which  experiences  are  put  together 


MODEBN   VALUES  AND   THE  BELIGION  OF  IDEALISM  29 

precisely  and  inevitably,  in  which  hypotheses  may  be  verified  and 
questions  asked  and  answered,  and  in  which  the  whole  realm  of 
human  values  is  discoverable? 

When  reality  is  defined  as  above  in  terms  of  validity,  we  have  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  the  world  of  Kant's  critical  philosophy, 
leaving  out  of  account  the  realistic  elements  provided  in  the  things- 
in-themselves.  But  Royce  recognizes  the  incompleteness  of  such  a 
philosophy  as  defines  reality  as  merely  validity  of  experience.  He 
endeavors  to  supply  a  lack  by  so  filling  out  experience  as  to  give  it 
independence,  autonomy,  and  substantial  reality.  He  takes  Kant's 
world  of  experience  and  binds  it  together  into  a  purposeful  con- 
sciousness. Kant's  substratum  to  experience  is  ignored,  because 
Eoyce  finds  no  need  of  taking  it  into  account.  Reality  is  reality  in 
terms  of  knowledge.  The  world  is  a  self-conscious  Being,  a  Person, 
an  Individual.  It  is  the  external  representation  of  an  internal  mean- 
ing, just  as  the  song  you  sing  or  the  tune  you  pick  out  upon  the 
piano  is  the  outward  expression  of  the  melody  that  haunts  your  inner 
consciousness.  The  world  of  suns  and  Milky  Ways,  of  inorganic  and 
organic  evolution,  of  states  and  religions  and  art,  of  private  struggle, 
hidden  grief,  and  personal  triumph,  is  the  song  of  the  Infinite  Being. 
Or,  to  change  the  metaphor,  the  World  is  the  game  which  the  Abso- 
lute is  playing  out  as  his  objectified  purpose.  As  a  corollary  of 
this  main  theorem,  space,  in  its  absolute  sense,  contains  no  here 
and  beyond,  for  all  space  is  present  in  the  conscious  glance  of  the 
All-knower.  Time  rolls  up  like  a  scroll,  and  the  Absolute  knows  all 
things,  past,  present,  future,  in  one  indivisible  and  undivided  time- 
span.  Cause  and  effect  are  simply  the  before  and  after  in  a  series 
and  the  relations  are  absolutely  reversible.  The  effect  that  follows — 
as  an  element  in  an  absolutely  fixed  and  certain  reality — is  to  be 
viewed  teleologically  as  the  cause,  for  both  cause  and  effect  are 
subordinate  to  the  reality  in  which  they  are  elements.  Each  indi- 
vidual thing  is  so  called  because  it  is  a  unique  and  essential  expres- 
sion of  the  life  of  the  Absolute ;  and  because  it  is  just  so  a  unique  and 
necessary  aspect  of  the  self-expression  of  the  Absolute,  each  finite 
act,  viewed  in  the  light  of  all  Reality,  is  a  free  and  purposeful  repre- 
sentation of  that  Absolute  purpose.  Viewed  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  finite  individuals,  they,  in  all  their  uniqueness  and  freedom,  are 
the  active  agencies  of  the  World  Individual.  The  stars  that  clash 
headlong  in  sidereal  space  are  thus  freely  and  uniquely  expressing 
their  own  and  the  World  Individual's  purpose  that  new  heavenly 
bodies  be  formed;  the  atoms  at  work  in  the  hidden  recesses  of  the 
mountain,  here  or  in  other  solar  systems,  are  thereby  living  their 
own  purposeful  lives  and  thereby  performing  the  will  of  God;  the 


30       EELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

races  of  men  that  have  struggled  up  to  social  democracy  or  have 
slipped  down  to  savagery,  the  individual  man  that  slays  his  fellow 
or  devotes  himself  to  a  righteous  cause, — are  all  doing  the  will  of  the 
Absolute,  finding  their  own  reality  and  asserting  their  own  precious 
freedom.  The  evil  that  men  experience,  singly  and  collectively,  not 
to  mention  the  hypothetical  heart-burns  of  atoms  and  animals,  is 
self-elected  and  self -borne  by  the  Absolute.  Evil  exists,  truly  enough, 
but  only  as  an  element  in  the  larger  reality  that  means  well  and  has 
in  advance  secured  a  positive  result.  The  World  is  one  and  infinite, 
but  present  here;  eternal,  but  present  now;  indivisible,  but  self- 
broken  into  an  infinitude  of  elements  that  are  not  meaningless 
fragments,  but  comprehensible  and  fitting  parts.  The  World  is 
conscious ;  it  is  active ;  it  is  purposeful.  What  is,  is  known  as  neces- 
sary and  as  good  in  a  vast  experience  of  "the  whole,  all  at  once." 
"By  the  absolute  reality  we  can  only  mean  either  that  which  is  pres- 
ent to  an  absolutely  organized  experience  inclusive  of  all  possible 
experience,  or  that  which  would  be  presented  as  the  content  of  such 
an  experience  if  there  were  one."^''  "The  terms  Reality  and  Organ- 
ized Experience  are  correlative  terms.  The  one  can  be  defined  as  the 
object,  the  content  of  the  other.  "^^ 

The  dialectic  by  means  of  which  Royce  clinches  his  argument  for 
the  existence  of  the  Absolute  experience  is  given  concisely  in  his 
"Conception  of  God."  Therein^-  he  reduces  the  possible  alternative 
considerations  to  two.  "The  first  alternative  to  saying  that  there  is 
no  such  real  unity  of  experience  is  the  assertion  that  such  a  unity 
is  a  bare  and  ideal  possibility.  But  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  a 
merely  possible  truth,  definable  apart  from  actual  experience." 
The  second  consideration  "appears  when  we  ask  our  finite  experience 
whereabouts  is  in  any  wise  even  suggested  the  actually  experienced 
fact  of  w^hich  that  hypothetical  proposition  relating  to  the  ideal  or 
absolute  experience,  is  the  expression.  What  in  finite  experience 
suggests  the  truth  that  if  there  were  an  absolute  experience  it  would 
find  a  certain  unity  of  facts?"  And  the  answer  to  this  question  is 
as  follows:  "Any  finite  experience  must  regard  itself  as  suggesting 
some  sort  of  truth.  To  do  so,  an  experience  must  indicate  what  a 
higher  or  inclusive — i.  e.,  a  more  organized  experience  would 
find  presented  thus  or  thus  to  itself.  .  .  .  Granted  that  there 
is  no  absolute  experience  as  a  concrete  fact,  but  only  the  will 
to  have  it;  then  this  absolute  erroneousness  of  the  real  experience 
will  be  the  absolute  truth.  ,  .  .  The  very  effort  to  assert  that  the 

10  "Conception  of  God,"  p.  24. 

11  Id.,  p.  27.  ^ 

12  Pp.  27-30.  ' 


MODEBN   VALUES  AND   TEE  RELIGION  OF  IDEALISM  31 

whole  world  of  experience  is  a  world  of  fragmentary  and  finite  ex- 
perience is  an  effort  involving-  a  contradiction.  Experience  must 
constitute,  in  its  entirety,  one  self-determined  and  consequently 
absolute  and  organized  whole.  For  truth  is,  so  far  as  it  is  known. 
Now  this  proposition  applies  as  well  to  the  totality  of  the  world  of 
finite  experience  as  it  does  to  the  parts  of  that  world.  There  must 
then  be  an  experience  to  which  is  present  the  constitution  {i.  e.,  the 
actual  limitation  and  narrowness)  of  all  finit.e  experience,  just  as 
surely  as  there  is  such  a  constitution.  But  this  fact  that  the  world 
of  finite  experience  has  no  experience  beyond  it  could  not  be  present, 
as  a  fact,  to  any  but  an  absolute  experience,  which  knew  all  that  is 
or  that  genuinely  can  be  known." 

As  is  to  be  expected,  Royce  identifies  God  with  his  Absolute.  In 
the  work  quoted  above^^  he  says  that  in  advance  of  any  proofs  of 
God's  existence  he  will  mean  by  the  word  God  a  being  who  is  con- 
ceived as  possessing  to  the  full  all  logically  possible  knowledge,  in- 
sight, and  wisdom.  His  final  description  of  God  is  as  follows:^* 
**God  is  thought  that  sees  its  own  fulfilment  in  the  world  of  self- 
possessed  life — in  other  words,  a  thought  whose  ideas  are  not  mere 
shadows,  but  have  an  aspect  in  which  they  are  felt  as  well  as  meant, 
appreciated  as  well  as  described, — yes,  I  should  unhesitatingly  say, 
loved  as  well  as  conceived,  willed  as  well  as  viewed.  Such  a  thought 
you  can  also  call  in  its  wholeness  a  Self ;  for  it  beholds  the  fulfilment 
of  its  own  thinking,  and  views  the  determined  character  of  its  living 
experience  as  identical  with  what  its  universal  conceptions  mean. 
.  .  .  God  is  known  as  thought  fulfilled,  as  Experience  absolutely 
organized,  so  as  to  have  one  ideal  unity  of  meaning;  as  Truth  trans- 
parent to  itself;  as  Life  in  absolute  accordance  with  idea;  as  Self- 
hood eternally  obtained." 

Obviously,  the  implication  of  Royce 's  philosophy  as  finally  formu- 
lated in  "The  World  and  the  Individual"  is  that  religion  consists  in 
the  conscious  acceptance  on  the  part  of  the  finite  individual  of  his 
part  in  the  life  of  the  Absolute.  His  little  life  is  to  be  viewed  as 
secure  and  meaningful  in  its  universal  setting.  He  is  a  part  of  a 
purposeful  plan,  and  thereby  does  his  finite  effort  receive  value  and 
are  his  finite  failures  and  weaknesses  swallowed  up  in  the  guaranteed 
success  of  the  infinite  reality  of  which  he  is  a  significant  element. 
The  evil  that  life  brings  him  he  will  suffer  bravely,  for  does  not  God 
agonize  with  him  ?  His  sword  may  snap  in  the  conflict ;  he  may  even 
die  in  the  heat  of  it ;  but  even  so  he  has  a  share  in  the  glory  of  the 
victory,  for  he  is  a  known  and  valued  compatriot  of  the  great  Leader, 
and  he  is  sure  that  the  battle  is  the  Lord's. 

13  p.  9.  14  P.  22. 


32        EELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CON^ISTENCT 

The  Conception  of  Individuality 

As  has  been  said  above,  Eoyce  conceives  of  reality  as  a  self- 
conscious,  purposeful  Individual.  All  reality  is  comprised  within 
its  grasp  and  there  is  no  other  individual  in  the  world  beyond  itself. 
Our  first  objection  to  such  a  conception  is  this :  If  there  be  only  one 
individual  in  the  universe,  then  it  can  have  no  individuality,  for 
individuality  depends  for  its  existence  upon  alternatives,  upon 
choice,  upon  clash  of  wills  and  purposes;  in  short,  to  use  Eoyce 's 
own  phrase,  as  it  occurs  in  "The  Problem  of  Christianity,"  indi- 
viduality depends  upon  "the  possibility  of  interpretation."  Royce 
says:^^  "Metaphysically  considered,  the  world  of  interpretation  is 
the  world  in  which,  if  indeed  we  are  able  to  interpret  at  all,  we  learn 
to  acknowledge  the  being  and  the  inner  life  of  our  f ellowmen ;  and  to 
understand  the  constitution  of  temporal  existence,  with  its  endlessly 
accumulating  sequence  of  significant  deeds.  In  this  world  of  inter- 
pretation, of  whose  most  general  structure  we  have  now  obtained 
a  glimpse,  selves  and  communities  may  exist,  past  and  future  can  be 
defined,  and  the  realms  of  the  spirit  may  find  a  place  which  neither 
barren  conception  nor  the  chaotic  flow  of  interpenetrating  percep- 
tions could  ever  render  significant."  If  I  understand  Royce 's 
meaning  of  the  world  of  interpretation,  it  seems  to  be  a  most  valu- 
able contribution  to  a  true  philosophy  of  experience;  for  it  insists 
upon  the  existence  of  the  linkages  that  make  a  world  of  experience 
possible.  Experience  is  a  social  product  that  depends  upon  mean- 
ings, upon  interpretations,  for  its  being.  It  is  not  constituted  by  a 
set  of  eternal  concepts,  nor  by  myriad  direct  perceptions  or  intui- 
tions. Rather  it  is  a  complex  composed  of  direct  and  immediate 
data,  which  are  at  once  known  and  described  and  modified  and  used 
in  the  light  of  such  past  experience  as  we  possess.  Conceptualism  ab- 
stracts the  linkages  of  experience  and  elevates  them  to  a  lonely 
grandeur  of  especial  distinction.  Intuitionalism  denies  the  linkages 
and  sets  up  a  world  of  fragments.  The  true  philosophy  of  experience 
must  recognize  both  these  elements  as  functionally  fused  into  an 
instrumental  product  that  means  acquaintanceship  and  understand- 
ing and  the  possibility  of  manipulation. 

Returning  to  Royce 's  conception  of  the  Absolute  Experience,  we 
may  well  ask  how,  if  the  world  of  experience  is  a  world  of  interpre- 
tation, any  single  individual  can  have  meaningful  experience.  Royce 
frequently  implies  his  own  answer  to  the  question.  The  world  may 
be  an  individual  because  it  possesses  its  own  infinite  variety  for  its 
content.    But  we  may  further  ask  what  is  the  need  of  interpretation 

15  IL,  p.  160. 


MODEBN   VALUES  AND   THE  EELIGION  OF  IDEALISM  33 

and  where  is  its  possibility  if  the  life  of  the  Absolute  is  present  before 
it  as  a  totum  simul,  involving  an  immediate  knowledge  of  all  time,  all 
space,  all  purpose,  and  all  fulfilment.  Interpretation  is  a  triadic 
relation,  as  Koyce  defines  it,  involving  the  knowing  individual,  the 
object  to  be  interpreted  and  the  body  of  social  experience  in  the  light 
of  which  the  object  has  meaning  and  through  which  the  interpreta- 
tion may  be  justified.  How  then  can  an  experience  which  is  essen- 
tially an  immediate  knowledge  have  room  for  any  interpretation 
whatsoever?  It  might  be  said  that  the  interpretation  lies  in  the  con- 
scious life  of  finite  individuals,  and  that,  as  the  Absolute  is  ulti- 
mately within  its  parts,  interpretation  is  truly  the  process  by  means 
of  which  its  own  life  is  built  up.  But  on  such  a  basis,  the  Absolute 
recedes  to  the  vanishing  point  and  ceases  to  possess  an  independent 
life  of  its  own.  Needless  to  say  it  would  be  impossible  to  arrive  at  an 
Absolute  experience  through  a  process  of  summation. 

Granted,  however,  that  the  Absolute  exists,  then  what  of  the  finite 
individual  ?  Royce  believes  that  the  finite  being  has  his  own  rights, 
his  own  purposes  and  his  own  freedom  in  conception  and  in  perform- 
ance. The  true  status  of  absolute  and  finite  individuality  is  expressed 
in  the  following  alternatives :  Either  the  Absolute  exists  and  the  finite 
selves  are  only  his  objects  of  self-realization ;  or  the  finite  selves  exist 
in  a  unique  and  purposeful  way  and  the  Absolute  is  only  a  name. 
In  other  words,  either  the  finite  variety  of  the  world  is  only  the 
objectification  of  a  unified  inner  purpose  that  requires  just  that 
variety  of  objects  and  no  other  for  the  Absolute's  self-realization,  in 
which  event  the  finite  elements  or  selves  are  controlled  by  a  power 
beyond  them;  or  the  finite  selves  engaged  in  living  their  own  lives; 
and  fulfilling  their  own  ends,  represent  an  incalculable  element  ini 
reality  that  breaks  through  and  evades  any  attempt  to  coerce  and 
control  it  in  the  interest  of  a  preconceived  end.  In  the  former  event, 
the  term  individuality  is  inapplicable  to  the  finite  selves,  for  they  are 
thus  made  puppets  of  a  larger  will ;  in  the  latter  event,  the  term  indi- 
viduality is  inapplicable  to  the  Absolute,  for  the  sum  of  purposes 
represents  no  single  purpose  and  seeks  no  single  goal.  Eoyee's 
philosophy  can  meet  neither  alternative  and  stand. 

Royce  identifies  freedom  with  uniqueness  of  self-expression. 
Certainly  such  a  definition  of  freedom  is  empirically  satisfactory ;  for 
what  greater  freedom  a  man  could  ask  than  the  freedom  to  act  un- 
eonstrainedly  in  the  pursuit  of  an  end  that  is  representative  of  his 
whole  selfhood,  is  hard  to  conceive.  If  we  accept  Royce 's  Absolute, 
then  every  act  that  takes  place  in  the  world  may  be  regarded  as 
unique  and  necessary  for  the  complete  expression  of  the  Absolute 
purpose — an  act  that  completely  fulfils  the  purpose  and  for  which  no 


34       BELIGIOUS    VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

other  could  be  substituted.  But  even  that  is  only  to  say  that  the 
Absolute  is  free  and  not  that  the  finite  individual  is  so,  for  the  given 
quantity  in  the  case  is  made  to  serve  at  the  same  time  in  an  active  and 
a  passive  role.  It  is  passive  as  the  embodiment  of  an  Absolute  will; 
it  is  active  as  the  expression  of  a  unique  meaning  for  itself.  The  dual 
role  of  finite  individuality,  each  phase  of  which  is  incompatible  with 
the  other,  presents  an  insuperable  difficulty. 

Individuality  and  Time 

We  have  so  far  criticized  Royce's  conception  of  the  Absolute  Indi- 
vidual on  the  grounds  of  his  own  description  of  the  World  of  Inter- 
pretation, in  which  it  was  said  to  be  essential  to  the  existence  of 
experience  that  it  represent  functional  linkages  within  a  triadic 
community  of  interest.  From  another  point  of  view,  his  conception 
of  Absolute  Individuality  seems  to  be  vitiated  by  his  treatment  of 
the  element  of  time,  for  we  believe  that,  to  treat  the  conception  of 
time  as  Royce  does,  is  to  eliminate  from  your  philosophy  all  con- 
sideration of  values.  As  we  know,  Royce  reduces  all  time  to  the 
present  experience  of  the  Absolute,  whose  time-span  is  coequal  with 
the  entire  series  of  total  reality.  In  the  life  of  the  Absolute,  there 
is  no  past,  no  future,  but  one  eternal  now.  The  primeval  nebula  and 
the  last  clash  of  frozen  suns  are  even  now  present  in  his  knowledge, 
while  the  little  play  of  human  races  upon  the  planet  Earth  is  at 
once  begun  and  ended. 

Royce  makes  a  vigorous  effort  in  his  philosophy  to  take  account 
of  the  presence  of  evil  in  the  world.  His  treatment  consists  of  show- 
ing that  all  evils  that  finite  individuals  suffer  are  ipso  facto  suffered 
by  the  Absolute  as  well,  and  that  in  his  divine  insight  these  evils, 
while  recognized  as  such,  are  viewed  and  known  as  necessary  for  the 
fullness  and  the  perfection  of  divine  life.  But,  manoeuver  as  he  may, 
Royce  can  not  bring  upon  the  field  of  his  Absolute  Experience  any- 
thing that  can  be  called  an  evil.  For  even  as  an  event  is  called  evil, 
it  is  at  the  same  time  known  as  good  in  the  larger  vision.  There  is 
no  evil,  for  there  is  no  real  disturbance  or  destruction  of  values. 
Whatever  is,  is  right  and  desired.  This  Triangle  Fire,  this  Titanic 
Disaster,  this  system  of  industrial  economy  that  results  in  poor  pay 
and  long  hours  and  frightful  accidents  to  the  workmen,  yes,  this 
very  human  existence  where  Love  and  Death  keep  watch  together, — • 
are  all  to  be  viewed  in  their  ultimate  reality  as  good,  for  they  are  all 
part  of  the  divine  will  and  pvirpose  and  their  final  significance  is  even 
now  consciously  present  to  the  Absolute. 

But  it  is  just  the  strain  of  expectancy,  the  horror  of  destroyed 


MODEEN   VALUES  AND   THE  RELIGION   OF   IDEALISM  35 

values,  the  slow  and  sometimes  never-accomplished  process  of  heal- 
ing life,  that  constitute  the  evil  of  finite  experience.  If  we  could 
know  in  advance  the  fate  of  the  life  that  is  hanging  in  the  balance, 
if  we  could  discount  our  dead  losses  at  some  universal  clearing  house, 
and  could  experience  here  and  now  the  ministry  of  healing  days 
and  months  and  years,  then  we,  too,  might  understand  the  Absolute 
economy  that  Royce  speaks  of.  But  life  is  lived  in  time;  and  time 
means  waiting,  strain,  expectancy,  endurance.  Time,  in  its  human 
sense,  is  necessary  for  the  production,  the  enjoyment,  and  the  dis- 
appearance of  values.  Satisfaction  in  possession  is  closely  linked 
up  with  the  joys  of  expectation  and  the  pangs  of  regret.  If  we  pould 
know  in  one  conscious  present  the  uncertainty  of  anticipation,  the 
fact  of  possession,  and  the  ultimate  gain  that  comes  from  loss, 
wherein  would  be  the  significance  of  what  we  now  describe  as  the 
value  element  of  experience  ? 

The  conception  of  time  is  likewise  closely  bound  up  with  the 
significance  of  action  and  purpose.  Since  Royce  describes  his  own 
philosophy  as  Absolute  Voluntarism,  it  is  to  be  expected  that  the 
system  make  adequate  provision  for  just  these  elements  of  action 
and  purpose,  but  an  Absolute  philosophy  of  the  type  of  Royce 's 
is  unable  to  do  this.  His  world  is  a  finished  world.  There  can  be 
no  action,  for  everything  is  already  done.  There  can  be  no  pur- 
pose, for  nothing  remains  to  be  done  for  which  a  purpose  might 
be  formed.  The  time-span  is  present;  the  world  is  here  and  now 
spread  out  before  the  Absolute  consciousness  with  the  divine  purpose 
eternally  fulfilled.  But  it  is  just  the  looking  forward  to  the  consum- 
mation of  a  purpose  not  now  fulfilled  that  constitutes  what  we  call 
by  that  name.  When  we  say  that  a  certain  end  was  my  purpose,  and 
that  it  was  realized  or  given  up,  then  it  is  a  dead  purpose.  It  is  in 
the  pickling  solution  of  retrospect.  "When  I  say,  here  and  now  my 
purpose  is  fulfilled,  I  thereby  give  myself  the  cue  for  the  formation  of 
new  and  unfulfilled  purposes.  Purposes  look  to  the  future.  They 
represent  potential  existence.  They  may  come  to  realization  or  they 
may  not,  and  there  is  always  connected  with  them  an  element  of  con- 
tingency, as  they  must  await  the  passage  of  time.  Ideally,  the  result 
is  present;  but  if  ideal  presence  were  a  guarantee  of  actual  occur- 
rence, one  would  never  go  to  the  trouble  of  forming  plans  and  setting 
up  ^nds  at  all.  For  it  is  just  the  fact  that  the  coming  to  pass  of  the 
thing  hoped  for,  the  realization  of  the  evidence  of  things  unseen, 
depends  on  what  I  may  do,  upon  my  skill,  my  persistency,  my  in- 
genuity, or  even  upon  aleatory  elements  over  which  I  have  no  control, 
that  causes  my  purpose  to  have  a  definite  relation  to  my  actions  and 
to  be  a  significant  aspect  of  my  self-expression.    Purpose  possesses 


36        BELIGIOUS    VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

meaning  only  in  the  light  of  future  contingency;  and  if  for  the 
Absolute  there  is  no  future  and  no  contingency,  he  can  not  be  said  to 
have  the  power  of  setting  up  purposes. 

The  Incompatibility  of  Absolute  Inclusiveness  and  Individuality 

A  final  objection  to  Royce's  conception  of  the  Absolute  Individual 
arises  in  connection  with  the  infinite  catholicity  in  accepting  moral 
standards  that  such  an  individual  must  exhibit.  Inconsistency  of 
action  is,  of  course,  a  common  enough  phenomenon.  We  say  that  no 
one  is  all  bad  or  all  good.  But  we  do  classify  persons  with  reference 
to  their  common  tendencies  to  action  of  different  sorts  in  given  situa- 
tions. We  say  that  a  person  has  a  strong  individuality  when  he  com- 
monly acts  decisively  and  consistently  with  standards  that  he  clearly 
recognizes.  He  who  is  lacking  in  decision,  or  who  fails  to  recognize 
any  standard  or  plan  of  life  that  he  may  call  his  own,  is  described 
as  being  deficient  in  individuality;  and  when  an  extreme  form  of 
chameleon-like  propensity  is  developed,  we  say  of  a  man  that  he  is 
a  nobody,  a  nonentity. 

If,  now,  we  view  the  Absolute  from  the  standpoint  of  the  contra- 
dictory actions  of  the  finite  individuals  that  constitute  his  self-ex- 
pression, he  appears  to  be  a  moral  nonentity.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  the  preceding  section,  the  Absolute  has  no  choice  of  ends  be- 
cause the  result  is  already  accomplished.  From  the  present  point 
of  view,  he  makes  no  choice  of  ends  because  he  is  both  alternatives. 
He  is  the  natural  order  that  decreed  the  Titanic  disaster,  while  at 
the  same  time  he  is  the  heroism  of  the  dying,  the  heartache  of  the 
living,  and  the  moral  purpose  of  the  investigations  that  followed  the 
event.  He  is  the  stem  economic  order  that  decrees  hard  conditions  of 
life  and  labor,  while  at  the  same  time  he  is  the  suffering  humanity, 
either  wise  or  foolish,  self -destroying  or  fate  destroyed,  that  labors 
under  the  hated  yoke.  He  is,  furthermore,  the  spirit  of  philanthropy 
that  strives  for  better  conditions,  the  spirit  of  the  Beloved  Community 
that  endeavors  to  link  all  men  together  in  the  embrace  of  a  humane 
and  other-regarding  social  regime.  The  love  of  the  Absolute  for  the 
finite  individual  is  compatible  with  any  amount  of  cruelty;  his 
wisdom,  with  any  excess  of  stupid  folly ;  his  warfare  on  the  side  of 
right,  with  any  victory  for  the  party  of  evil.  His  ultimate  triumph 
is  consistent  with  infinite  delay  in  bringing  the  triumph  to  pass.  He 
is  not  "the  fairest  among  ten  thousand,"  for  in  his  person  he  bears 
the  blots  and  blemishes,  the  disfigurements  and  deformities,  of  every 
one  of  the  ten  thousand,  along  with  their  beauty  and  their  strength. 
Such  a  conception  as  Royce's  may  be  called  an  Individual;  but  in 


MODERN   VALVES  AND   TEE  RELIGION   OF  IDEALISM  37 

the  moral  sense  it  can  never  mean  what  we  are  trying  to  express  when 
we  use  the  word  in  ordinary  speech. 

The  implication  of  the  incompatibility  between  individuality  and 
all-inclusiveness  for  ethical  and  religious  concerns  is  just  this:  the 
Absolute  is  neither  the  object  of  moral  endeavor  nor  of  religious  fer- 
vor, for  it  is  impossible  to  make  a  definitive  statement  of  moral  and 
religious  purpose  except  in  terms  of  selected  ends  which  carry  their 
own  empirical  values.  It  is  of  no  small  significance  that  Royce 
frames  his  ethical  ideal,  that  of  loyalty  to  loyalty,  in  empirical  terms, 
and  his  religious  ideal  in  the  very  practical,  unmetaphysical  concep- 
tion of  a  Beloved  Community.  To  be  loyal  to  loyalty  means,  be 
loyal  to  such  causes  as  can  command  your  allegiance  and  to  respect 
a  like  devotion  on  the  part  of  others.  The  formula,  indeed,  seems  to 
be  needlessly  abstract  and  to  have  its  edge  dulled  by  being  compelled 
to  include  too  much.  For  loyalty  to  B's  loyalty  on  the  part  of  A 
quite  possibly  cuts  across  the  boundary  line  of  their  separate  causes. 
A  serves  his  flag  and  B,  his,  of  a  different  nation.  A's  loyalty  to  B's 
loyalty  is  than  a  rather  empty  matter,  for  A  is  hacking  might  and 
main  at  B's  cause.  Except  for  the  sound  of  the  thing,  they  might  as 
well  be  enemies.  But  both  A  and  B  may  justly  be  supposed  to  be 
interested  in  furthering  justice  and  equity  upon  the  earth,  and  thus 
their  common  cause  is  large  enough  to  include  both  their  lesser 
loyalties.  On  the  'other  hand,  B  may  be  consciously  devoted  to  a 
cause  that  is  in  every  sense  incompatible  with  that  of  A.  He  may  be 
engaged  in  an  iniquitous  traffic  that  opposes  in  spirit  the  promotion 
of  happiness  among  men.  In  that  case,  A  would  seem  to  have  no 
alternative  except  both  to  oppose  B's  cause  and  to  attempt  to  break 
down  his  loyalty  to  that  cause. 

Eoyce's  latest  formulation  of  the  object  of  the  moral  and  the 
religious  life  represents  the  adoption  of  just  some  such  universal 
<feuse,  some  such  ideal  of  the  spread  of  human  values,  as  has  been 
indicated  above.  In  the  "Problem  of  Christianity,"  he  describes  the 
object  of  Christian  loyalty  as  the  Beloved  Community,  in  which  all 
members  are  devoted  to  the  upbuilding  and  the  extension  of  a  life  of 
mutual  forbearance,  affection,  and  helpfulness.  "Loyalty,  in  the 
individual,  is  his  love  for  an  united  community,  expressed  in  a  life 
of  devotion  to  that  community. "^^  "The  realm  of  grace  (synon- 
ymous with  the  Beloved  Community)  is  the  realm  of  the  powers  and 
the  gifts  that  save,  by  thus  originating  and  sustaining  and  inform- 
ing the  loyal  life.  The  realm  contains,  at  the  very  least,  three 
essentially  necessary  constituent  members:  First,  the  ideally  lovable 
community  of  many  individuals  in  one  spiritual  bond ;  secondly,  the 

16  I.,  p.  178. 


38       BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

spirit  of  this  community,  which  is  present  both  as  the  human  indi- 
vidual whose  power  originated  and  whose  example,  whose  life  and 
death,  have  led  and  still  guide  the  community,  and  as  the  united 
spiritual  activity  of  the  whole  community;  thirdly,  Charity  itself, 
the  love  of  the  community  by  all  its  members,  and  of  the  members 
by  the  community.  "^^  Royce,  of  course,  does  not  identify  the  Be- 
loved Community  with  the  Universal  Community  of  the  Absolute 
Life,  but  rather  regards  it  as  a  type  of  the  latter.  In  so  far  as  the 
Beloved  Community  exhibits  the  ideal  of  loyalty  and  is  engaged  in 
furthering  the  coming  of  the  Absolute  Community,  it  is  consistent 
with  his  philosophy.  Assimilate  and  apply  the  creed  of  loyalty  ''and 
you  have  grasped  the  principle  of  Christian  institutional  life  in  the 
past,  and  the  principle  which  will  develop  countless  neAV  institutions 
in  the  future,  and  which  will  survive  them."^^  We  may  sum  up  the 
religious  bearings  of  the  work  in  Royce 's  own  words:  "Aid  toward 
the  coming  of  the  universal  community  by  helping  to  make  the  work 
of  religion  not  only  as  catholic  as  is  already  the  true  spirit  of  loyalty, 
but  as  inventive  of  new  social  arts,  as  progressive  as  is  now  natural 
science.  So  you  shall  help  in  making,  not  merely  happy  individuals 
(for  no  power  can  render  detached  individuals  permanently  happy, 
or  save  them  from  death  or  from  woe).  You  shall  aid  towards  the 
unity  of  spirit  of  those  who  shall  be  at  once  free  and  loyal.  "^^ 

Royce  has  herein  very  acceptably  described  a  most  important 
aspect  of  true  religion ;  but  the  arguments  we  have  brought  forward 
in  this  section  lead  us  to  consider  it  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
Universal  Community  that  Royce  would  have  us  aid  in  bringing  to 
pass,  is  in  any  sense  identifiable  with  his  Absolute.  The  finite  indi- 
viduals that  are  known  as  mankind,  do  not  comprise  any  such  com- 
munity to-day,  and  it  is  problematical  if  they  ever  will.  But  man- 
kind has  made  vast  strides  in  that  direction  and  we  accept  the 
working  ideal  that  some  day  a  true  universal  community  may  be 
realized.  It  is  just  such  an  ideal  that  we  adopt  as  the  great  cause  to 
which  we  are  loyal.  To  posit  this  ideal  as  certain  of'  realization,  is 
simply  to  say  that  ^our  faith  is  so  strong  that  you  must  believe  in 
the  final  outcome  so  firmly  as  to  set  it  up  as  at  present,  here  and  now, 
assured.  But  as  far  as  the  logical  consistency  of  Royce 's  Absolute  is 
concerned,  every  man's  hand  might  as  well  be  lifted  against  his 
brother,  and  human  ethical  values  might  disappear  from  the  face  of 
the  earth. 

17  I.,  p.  192.  18  II.,  p.  429.  19  II.,  pp.  431-32. 


CHAPTER  IV 

A  Descriptive  Study  of  Religious  Experience  and  the 

God-Concept 

In  a  previous  chapter  of  this  paper  we  have  followed  the  dis- 
integration of  the  intellectual  supports  of  Classical  Christianity 
under  the  criticisms  of  modern  science  and  philosophy.  It  is  our 
belief  that  Kant  has  totally  discredited  the  possible  existence  of  the 
central  figure  of  the  Theistic  and  Deistic  world-plans  as  a  Being 
independent  of  the  cosmos  and  human  experience.  He  did  this  by 
placing  such  a  conception  outside  the  boundaries  of  scientific  demon- 
stration and  making  it  unacceptable  to  the  scientific  sense.  In  addi- 
tion, we  have  described  the  attempt  of  Absolute  Idealism  to  estab- 
lish the  existence  of  God  through  a  philosophy  of  religion.  And  as 
we  have  examined  such  systems  as  those  of  Hegel  and  Royce,  we  have 
been  compelled  to  deny  on  the  very  basis  of  intellectual  inconsistency 
the  success  of  these  efforts  to  manufacture  a  God  out  of  whole  cloth. 

It  is  our  belief  that  any  attempt  to  elaborate  a  God  through 
philosophy  will  fail.  God  must  first  exist  to  be  discovered  and 
described,  or  he  does  not  exist  at  all.  The  work  of  science,  and  of 
philosophy  as  science,  is  to  analyze,  classify,  delineate,  explain ;  never 
to  produce,  except  as  better  understanding  is  real  production.  Philos- 
ophy as  applied  in  the  study  of  religion  must  abide  by  the  same 
rules  of  procedure.  It  can  not  produce  a  religion;  it  can  only  de- 
scribe one  as  given.  If  it  can  be  shown  that  God  and  religion  have 
empirical  sources,  and  if  these  sources  can  be  laid  bare,  then  we 
shall  feel  that  a  methodology  will  have  been  established  that  may  be 
applied  as  well  to  the  religion  of  Caliban  as  to  that  of  Jesus  or  Paul, 
To  this  end,  the  writer  will  rehearse  the  anthropological  common- 
places that  go  to  show  that  religion  was  present  in  the  life  of  man- 
kind before  the  conception  of  any  God  arose;  he  will  try  to  show 
that  the  conception  of  God  has  been  very  variable  and  has  under- 
gone, in  our  Western  religion  at  least,  continual  change,  and,  finally, 
that  just  as  religion  has  existed  before  the  God-concept  arose, 
just  so  it  may  exist  at  the  present  time  after  the  demands  of 
science  have  reduced  the  meaning  of  God  to  a  name  representative 
of  certain  values,  that  is  adopted  and  used  as  a  convenient  and 
historically  significant  means  of  self-expression.  In  other  words,  our 
last  point  means  that  the  conception  of  God  as  a  Being  represents  an 

39 


40       BELIGIOUS   VALVES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

historical  phase  of  religion  that  modern  scientific  knowledge  finds  no 
place  for ;  and  that  the  religious  man  who  is  at  the  same  time  scientific 
adopts  this  name  only  as  a  convenient  vehicle  of  self -representation. 

1.    Beligion  heloiu  the  Plane  of  the  God-Concept 

Anthropologists  have  differed  largely  among  themselves  as  to 
the  meaning  that  should  be  conveyed  by  the  term  religion.  Tylor, 
one  of  the  pioneers  in  this  field,  would  have  the  minimum  definition 
of  religion  imply  "the  belief  in  spiritual  beings."  J.  G.  Frazer  in- 
sists that  the  word  religion  should  be  limited  to  apply  only  to  "a 
propitiation  or  conciliation  of  powers  superior  to  man  which  are  be- 
lieved to  direct  and  control  the  course  of  nature  and  of  human  life." 
This  definition  aimed  to  make  a  distinction  between  primitive  scien- 
tific control  and  the  worship  of  spiritual  beings.  Primitive  men  have 
been  found  to  believe  very  generally  "that  the  course  of  nature  is 
determined,  not  by  the  passions  or  caprice  of  personal  beings,  but 
by  the  operation  of  immutable  laws  acting  mechanically. ' '  Personal 
beings  were  to  be  propitiated  by  worship;  the  impersonal  forces  of 
nature  were  to  be  controlled  by  the  possession  of  the  proper  charm  or 
the  performance  of  the  proper  ceremony,  before  which  there  was  no 
denial. 

This  clear-cut  distinction  between  religion  and  magic  that  Frazer 
made,  has,  however,  been  denied  in  the  more  recent  anthropological 
literature.  Eather,  it  seems  that  there  is  no  division  line  between 
the  two.  Shotwell,  in  an  article  entitled  ' '  The  Role  of  Magic '  '^  says : 
"Religion  was  no  special  creation  midway  along  the  centuries  of 
human  groping ;  it  was  but  the  intenser  action  of  that  mystic  power 
which  lay  at  the  heart  of  magic,"  And  again,  "For  mana  (the 
mysterious  power  behind  contagion)  does  not  die  out  when  animism 
appears,  nor  when  animism  grows  into  anthropomorphism,  nor  even 
when  polytheism  passes  away  before  monotheism.  Its  maleficent  ele- 
ment grows  less  and  less  apparent  and  its  beneficence  more,  until,  as 
divine  grace,  it  nourishes  the  faith  and  strengthens  the  moral  purpose 
of  the  Christian  world.  In  the  sacraments  of  the  Church  it  still 
works  by  the  laws  of  sympathetic-  magic.  In  the  realm  of  faith  it 
has  at  last  left  the  material  media  of  its  long  prehistoric  phase.  "^ 
The  point  made  by  Professor  Shotwell  is  well  illustrated  in  our 
Western  religious  tradition  by  the  automatically  communicable  magic 
of  the  ark,  or  pork,  or  of  manna  collected  in  quantity,  as  related  of 
that  phase  of  Hebrew  religious  evolution  when  Jehovah  was  as  yet  a 
polytheistic  deity. 

1  Am.  Jour,  of  Soc,  Vol.  15,  p.  791. 

2  7d.,  p.  791. 


RELIGIOUS  EXPEEIENCE  AND    THE   GOD-CONCEPT  41 

More  recent  attempts  to  define  religion  make  it  conterminous  with 
the  range  of  objects  to  be  described  by  such  words  as  sacra,  hiera, 
mana,  manitou,  etc.  Certain  experiences  of  the  primitive  man  seem 
to  be  more  highly  charged  with  the  essence  of  life  than  others.  It  is 
as  if  the  all-pervading  current  of  reality  produced  sparks  at  certain 
given  points,  which  thereafter  represent  par  excellence  the  force 
behind  life.  Such  places,  persons,  or  things  are  set  apart  as  different, 
exceptional.  They  are  to  be  employed  carefully,  for,  while  rightly 
used  they  are  powerful  aids,  wrongly  used  or  carelessly  approached, 
they  are  extremely  dangerous.    Hence  the  meaning  of  sacra,  mana,  etc. 

The  conception  of  mana  appears  in  the  religions  of  Melanesia.  It 
means  psychic  energy  of  all  kinds  and  is,  essentially,  created  by 
human  beings.  It  may,  however,  act  through  the  medium  of  water, 
or  a  stone,  or  other  natural  object.  The  chief  point  in  Melanesian 
religion  is  to  get  this  mana  for  oneself  or  to  get  it  used  in  one's  behalf. 
"Whatever  has  come  to  be  regarded  as  mana  exerts  an  extraordinary 
power. 

The  Algonkin  conception  of  manitou  is  described  by  William 
Jones  in  the  Journal  of  American  Folk-Lore,^  in  part  as  follows: 
* '  In  the  first  place  the  term  manitou  is  a  religious  word ;  it  carries 
with  it  the  idea  of  solemnity ;  and  whatever  the  association  it  always 
expresses  a  serious  attitude,  and  kindles  an  emotional  sense  of 
mystery.  The  conception  involved  in  its  use  can  best  be  shown  by 
taking  up  some  features  of  Algonkin  religion. 

"The  essential  character  of  Algonkin  religion  is  a  pure,  naive 
worship  of  nature.  In  one  way  or  another  associations  cluster  about 
an  object  and  give  it  a  certain  potential  value;  and  because  of  this 
supposed  potentiality,  the  object  becomes  the  recipient  of  an  adora- 
tion. The  degree  of  the  adoration  depends  in  some  measure  upon 
the  extent  of  confidence  reposed  in  the  object,  and  upon  its  supposed 
power  of  bringing  pleasure  or  inflicting  pain.  The  important  thing 
with  the  individual  is  the  emotional  effect  experienced  while  in  the 
presence  of  the  object,  or  with  an  interpreted  manifestation  of  the 
object.  The  individual  keeps  watch  for  the  effect,  and  it  is  the  effect 
that  fills  the  mind  with  a  vague  sense  of  something  strange,  some- 
thing mysterious,  something  intangible.  One  feels  it  as  the  result 
of  an  active  substance,  and  one 's  attitude  toward  it  is  purely  passive. 

'  *  To  experience  a  thrill  is  authority  enough  of  the  existence  of  the 
substance.  The  sentiment  of  its  reality  is  made  known  by  the  fact 
that  something  has  happened.  It  is  futile  to  ask  an  Algonkin  for  an 
articulate  definition  of  the  substance,  partly  because  it  would  be 
something  about  which  he  does  not  concern  himself,  and  partly  be- 

8  18:  183-90. 


42       RELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

cause  he  is  quite  satisfied  with  the  sentiment  of  its  existence.  He  feels 
that  the  property  is  everywhere,  is  omnipresent,  .  .  . 

"The  ceremonial  lodare  is  a  holy  symbol;  it  means  a  place  where 
one  can  enter  into  communication  with  higher  powers,  where  with 
sacrifice  and  offering,  with  music  and  dance  one  obtains  audience 
and  can  ask  for  things  beyond  human  control;  it  means  a  place 
where  one  can  forget  the  material  world  and  enjoy  the  experience  of 
that  magic  spell  which  one  feels  is  the  sign  that  not  only  is  one  in 
the  presence  of  the  supernatural  property,  but  in  that  of  the  beings 
who  hold  it  in  high  degree.  It  is  a  function  with  a  very  definite 
purpose.  It  is  to  invoke  the  presence  of  an  objective  reality;  the 
objectified  ideal  may  be  animate  or  inanimate.  And  the  ejffect  is  in 
the  nature  of  a  pleasing  thrill,  a  sense  of  resignation,  a  consolation. 
This  effect  is  the  proof  of  the  presence  of  the  manitou." 

In  summing  up  the  meaning  of  primitive  religion,  R.  R.  Marett, 
in  the  article  "Primitive  Religion,"  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  says 
it  is  "the  consecration  of  life,  the  stimulation  of  the  will  to  live  and 
to  do."  He  adds  that  "this  bracing  of  the  vital  feeling  takes  place 
by  means  of  imaginative  appeal  to  the  great  forces  man  perceives 
stirring  within  him  and  about  him,  such  appeal  proving  effective 
doubtless  by  reason  of  the  psychological  law  that  to  conceive  strongly 
is  to  imitate."  The  general  effect  of  contact  with  the  sacred  objects 
or  "churinga,"  is  said  by  Spencer  and  Gillen  in  their  works  on  the 
Central  Australian  tribes,  to  be  to  make  the  tribesman  "glad."  It 
likewise  makes  him  "good,"  so  that  he  is  no  longer  greedy  and 
selfish.  It  endows  him  with  second  sight,  gives  him  success  and  con- 
fidence in  war,  and  strengthens  him  in  unlimited  ways. 

2.     The  Various  Theisms 

Anthropology  has  as  yet  been  unable  to  furnish  a  thoroughly 
satisfactory  classification  of  religions  in  an  ascending  series.  But  it 
seems  enough  to  say  that  religion  begins  in  the  primitive  forms  dis- 
cussed in  the  preceding  section  and  exhibits  development  until  it 
reaches  the  plane  of  monotheism.  The  worship  of  sacred  objects 
develops  into  animism,  the  worship  of  spirits.  The  savage,  tripping^ 
over  the  vine  that  lay  concealed  in  his  path,  feels  that  he  has  had  a 
contact  with  an  evil  spirit.  Returning  from  a  bootless  hunt,  he 
blames  his  ill-fortune  upon  an  unfriendly  genius  of  the  woods;  or, 
staggering  homeward  under  the  heavy  weight  of  spoils,  he  is  careful 
to  offer  up  to  his  good  spirit  the  choicest  morsel  of  the  quarry.  He 
lives  in  a  world  that  is  peopled  with  spirits.  The  river,  the  tree,  the 
thunder-cloud,  the  fruitful  field,  the  shining  crystal,  the  peaceful 
moon,  the  life-giving  rain,  the  grateful  sunlight, — all  are  more  than 


BELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE  AND    THE   GOD-CONCEPT  43 

just  river,  crystal,  and  sun :  they  are  living  spirits  and  have  an  atti- 
tude of  praise  or  blame  toward  him.  There  are  spirits  of  earth  and 
sky  and  air;  spirits  of  the  nation,  of  the  province,  of  the  district, 
of  the  hills,  of  the  lakes,  of  the  grains :  spirits  that  guard  the  crafts 
and  guilds  of  the  industries  and  agriculture;  spirits  for  the  house- 
hold operations,  for  the  kitchen  range  and  the  sauce-pot ;  spirits  pro- 
tecting the  threshold,  the  door,  the  hinge ;  spirits  fertilizing  the  land 
with  water-springs,  the  givers  of  corn  and  wine  and  oil ;  spirits  that 
guard  the  mores  of  the  tribe  and  punish  transgressions  against  the 
established  ways  of  acting. 

Group  life,  with  its  institution  of  common  worship,  tends  to 
reduce  to  common  possession  all  those  values  that  represent  the  wel- 
fare of  its  members.  Such  aspects  of  their  experience  as  appertain 
to  all, — the  group-ancestor,  the  arching  sky,  the  broad  river,  the 
moon,  the  sun,  or  the  storm-cloud,  are  celebrated  in  chant  and  dance 
and  sacrifice.  As  any  or  all  of  these  objects  of  experience  become 
matters  of  common  knowledge  and  regard,  the  culture  of  the  group 
ministers  to  the  perpetuation,  the  enlargement  and  the  coordination 
of  the  tradition  that  concerns  them.  As  one  or  other  object  of  wor- 
ship becomes  preeminent  within  the  group,  a  special  cult  arises  and 
the  deity  gains  in  definiteness  and  distinctness  of  conception.  Thus 
there  develop  gods  of  nature,  such  as  Varuna,  Dyaus,  Neptune, 
Apollo,  and  Zeus ;  plant  and  animal  deities ;  ancestral  gods ;  gods  of 
social  institutions  and  national  feeling,  such  as  the  hearth-fire  gods, 
city  gods  and  national  deities;  and  gods  that  represent  the  senti- 
ments and  affections  of  men  and  consecrate  their  moral  energies;  as 
well  as  others  too  numerous  to  mention. 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  religion  is  other  than  a  natural 
psychological  product.  It  begins  with  the  conception  of  sacred  ob- 
jects that  foster  or  decrease  human  values ;  it  continues  in  the  attribu- 
tion of  particular  values  to  the  control  of  certain  spirits,  and  ends 
with  the  attribution  of  all,  or  at  least  much  more  numerous  values  to 
the  disposal  of  a  divinity  or  a  group  of  divinities.  No  one  is  likely  to 
question  the  subjective  element  in  the  process  of  god-making  if  the 
reference  is  to  the  phenomena  of  animism,  for  that  is  to  be  regarded 
as  akin  to  a  belief  in  ghosts.  Nor  is  there  likely  to  be  any  objection 
to  one's  saying  that  gods  are  subjective  creations,  arising  out  of  the 
poetic  impulse,  if  the  term  god  is  applied  to  the  divinities  of  the 
Greek  or  Roman  pantheon,  the  mythology  of  the  Aryans  or  the 
Norse  Saga.  But  when  one  attempts  to  show  that  God,  the  God  we 
worship,  was  originally  just  such  an  autochthonic  divinity,  there  is 
likely  to  be  considerable  demurring  and  frequently  flat  denial.  To  be 
sure,  the  God  of  the  present-day  Western  tradition  is  not  the  same 


44       BELIGIOUS   VALUES  AND  INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

as  the  God  that  brought  the  Children  of  Israel  out  of  the  land  of 
Egypt;  but  he  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  that  God,  Jehovah,  who 
was  one  God  out  of  many  that  arose  among  the  Semites,  just  as  Zeus 
and  Apollo  did  among  the  Greeks,  and  was  no  more  than  the  sub- 
jectively originated  divinity  who  represented  the  values  held  dear 
to  the  descendants  of  Abraham, 

One  can  ask  for  no  better  illustration  of  the  elements  that  enter 
into  the  conception  of  a  god,  and  of  the  progress  through  polytheism 
to  monotheism,  than  the  naturalistic,  poetic  creation  of  God  at  the 
hands  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  teachers,  as  represented  in  the 
course  of  the  history  of  the  Jewish  people.  Hebrew  literature 
abounds  in  examples  of  the  way  in  which  those  values  that  relate 
most  directly  to  man's  biological  continuance  and  enjoymnet  were 
attributed  to  Jehovah.  It  was  he  that  gave  or  withheld  fertility  of 
soil,  sunshine,  rain,  increase  of  flocks  and  herds,  many  children,  long 
life  and  protection  from  enemies,  disease  and  the  violence  of  nature. 
He  is  the  sublime  and  worshipful  one,  whom  the  psalmist  apostro- 
phizes and  whose  glories  he  sings. 

The  ethical  values  that  Jehovah  favors  originate  in  the  moral 
practises  and  ideals  of  the  Hebrew  tribe  or  nation,  and  are  easily  and 
spontaneously  transferred  to  him.  The  beginning  of  the  Hebrew 
tradition  occurs  when  "Jehovah  said  unto  Abram,  get  thee  out  of  thy 
country  and  from  thy  kindred  and  from  thy  father's  house,  unto 
the  land  that  I  will  show  unto  thee. ' '  Jehovah  was  then  not  even  a 
tribal  god,  but  the  patron  divinity  of  a  single  family.  He  met  with 
his  proteges  at  springs  of  water,  in  clumps  of  trees,  and  upon  high 
places,  appearing  in  apparitions  and  dreams  and  talking  with  them 
in  the  most  open  and  democratic  way.  He  was  no  less  approachable 
for  Hagar,  the  servant  in  the  tent  of  Abraham,  than  he  was  for  the 
patriarch  himself.  His  protection  was  over  the  members  of  the 
family,  and  he  brought  them  peace  and  plenty.  They  worshipped 
him  at  the  sacrificial  meal,  pouring  out  his  portion  upon  the  sacred 
rock  or  smearing  the  sacred  pillar  with  fat  and  oil.  In  morals,  he 
was  as  easy-going  as  they,  and  accepted  the  crude  nomadic  code. 
Abraham's  harsh  treatment  of  Hagar  and  his  willingness  to  offer  up 
his  first-bom  son,  Isaac,  are  imputed  to  him  for  righteousness. 
Jacob's  deception  of  Isaac,  aided  and  abetted  by  his  mother  Rebecca, 
a  heroine  of  the  early  story,  is  related  only  as  a  tale  worth  the  telling. 
Evidently,  Jacob's  moral  obliquity  (from  our  point  of  view)  had 
no  fatal  consequences  to  his  peace  of  mind,  for  on  his  journey  from 
home  to  escape  the  wrath  of  Esau,  he  had  reassuring  heavenly  visions. 
Lying,  drunkenness,  adultery,  and  incest  are  unrebuked  elements  in 
the  moral  life  of  the  patriarchs. 


BELIGIOUS  EXPEHIENCE  AND   THE   GOD-CONCEPT  45 

The  laws  promulgated  by  Moses  at  the  Mount  exhibit  a  distinct 
advance  over  the  earlier  moral  standards  of  the  Hebrews;  and, 
accordingly,  they  represent  God  as  ethicized  to  the  same  degree. 
By  this  time,  the  exigencies  of  a  more  intricate  group  life  have 
compelled  and  brought  about  a  more  involved  and  definite  statement 
of  mutual  obligations  and  privileges  within  the  tribe,  although  the 
members  of  the  out-group  remain  as  yet  without  moral  status.  At 
this  stage  of  the  historical  development,  Jehovah  is  thought  of  and 
worshipped  as  the  giver  of  just  laws  for  the  governance  of  his 
chosen  people.  Whether  or  not  Moses  wrote  the  fundamental  mores 
of  his  tribe  upon  tablets  of  stone  and  presented  them  to  the  people 
for  ratification,  is  neither  here  nor  there ;  but  that  the  historic  con- 
sciousness of  the  group  recognizes  the  occurrence  as  a  fact  is  all- 
important.  When  the  people  of  Israel  accepted  their  obligation  to 
do  the  will  of  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Nature  and  the  guardian  of  their 
national  destinies,  they  brought  deliberately  into  consciousness  the 
moral  demands  of  that  divinity  and  took  upon  themselves  the  conse- 
quences of  failure  to  fulfil  their  part  of  the  contract.  For,  in  that 
act,  their  relation  to  Jehovah  became  one  of  contract,  entailing 
mutual  obligations.  Service  of  Jehovah  on  the  part  of  the  people 
was  recognized  as  bringing  national  prosperity  and  tribal  success; 
while  a  falling  away  in  service  was  inevitably  followed  by  loss  of 
Jehovah's  favor.  And  the  converse  was  equally  true;  national  or 
individual  calamity  was  the  sign  of  sin,  secret  or  known,  and  pros- 
perity was  the  indication  of  satisfactory  performance  of  obligation. 

When  wider  political  contacts  and  crushing  national  vicissitudes 
in  the  late  centuries  of  the  Two  Kingdoms  had  caused  the  religious 
geniuses  of  the  day  to  see  the  cosmopolitanism  of  virtue  and  the 
world-sweep  of  moral  movements,  the  religion  of  the  Hebrews  came 
to  possess  its  universal  significance.  Jehovah  is  recognized  as  the 
guide  of  all  national  destinies  and  not  as  simply  the  champion  of  a 
given  race.  His  function  is  no  longer  to  guarantee  the  success  and 
sanctity  of  a  single  set  of  mores,  but  he  is  recognized  as  the  com- 
mander-in-chief of  all  the  forces  of  good  everywhere  in  the  world. 
And  if  Jewish  religion  thus  gains  in  universality,  it  gains  no  less  in 
intensiveness.  Each  individual  is  to  know  his  moral  independence 
and  his  moral  responsibility.  Outward  ceremonial  gives  way  to 
inward  experience.  The  fat  of  lambs  and  the  blood  of  slain  beasts 
are  distasteful  to  a  God  who  insists  upon  the  sacrifice  of  an  humble 
and  contrite  spirit,  Mercy  and  justice  and  humility  are  required  of 
man,  but  only  such  manifestations  of  a  regenerated  and  purified  life 
are  of  worth  in  God's  sight. 

The  mouthpieces  and  the  creators  of  religious  opinion  during  this 


46       RELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

period  were  the  great  spiritual  innovators,  Amos,  Hosea,  Isaiah,  and 
others  of  scarcely  less  power.  They  studied  the  social  and  ethical 
conditions  of  their  day  and  cried  out  against  the  greedy,  swinish  guilt 
of  the  orthodox  followers  of  the  cultus.  Without  hesitation,  they 
ascribed  to  Jehovah  characteristics  that  were  called  for  in  their  own 
application  of  the  principles  of  ancient  custom,  but  missed  in  the 
formal  application  of  law  and  rule,  or  voluntarily  set  aside.  Of  their 
own  initiative  they  broke  through  the  inconsistencies  connected  with 
using  a  tribal  unit  in  ethical  concerns  and  extended  wide  the  frontiers 
of  the  moral  kingdom.  "Are  ye  not  as  the  children  of  the  Ethiopians 
to  me,  0  children  of  Israel?  saith  Jehovah.  Have  not  I  brought  up 
Israel  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  the  Philistines  from  Caphtor  and 
the  Syrians  from  Kir?"*  They  recognized  new  ethical  values,  pro- 
duced by  changed  political  and  social  conditions,  and  they  unhesi- 
tatingly spoke  of  them  as  the  requirements  of  Jehovah  for  his  people. 
The  prophets  literally  remade  their  God  to  include  an  intensive, 
spiritual,  and  universal  morality. 

The  next  phase  of  the  developing  Hebrew  religion  is  to  be  re- 
garded, from  the  standpoint  of  a  later  time  and  a  more  inclusive 
retrospect,  as  a  backward  step.  Israel  returns  from  captivity  with  a 
codified  system  of  moral  and  religious  practise,  but  without  the  polit- 
ical freedom  that  had  been  the  main  source  of  ethical  movement  in 
the  earlier  centuries  of  its  history.  An  ecclesiastical  feudalism  takes 
the  place  of  the  monarchy.  A  petrified  legal  code  is  substituted  for 
the  free  spiritual  life  that  had  fostered  the  insight  and  the  influence 
of  the  prophets.  Regulation  and  systematization  of  the  religious 
practises,  as  laid  down  in  a  book  of  laws,  supplant  the  former  auton- 
omy of  worship.  Scribes  and  lawyers  are  needed  to  interpret  the 
intricacies  of  a  general  code  when  it  is  to  be  applied  to  the  exigencies 
of  daily  practise;  and  their  decisions  come  to  represent  precedent 
that  may  never  be  disregarded.  Hebrew  religion  becomes  the  prac- 
tise of  a  legal  code,  and  God  himself  is  made  subservient  to  the  power 
of  the  Book.  As  was  to  be  expected,  the  spirit  of  life  fled  the  reli- 
gion of  later  Hebraism,  and  the  dry  bones  of  a  static  creed  stultified 
the  Holy  of  Holies  of  spiritual  insight  and  moral  endeavor. 

The  true  succession  of  the  Hebrew  prophetical  tradition  occurs 
in  the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  which  represent  the 
revolt  of  a  truly  religious  and  moral  nature  against  the  death  of 
legalism  and  class  pride.  Steeped  in  the  writings  of  the  great 
prophets  of  an  earlier  day,  and  possessed  in  himself  of  a  spirituality 
that  was  adequate  to  the  work  of  ethical  and  religious  innovation, 
Jesus  interpreted  to  his  fellow-men  a  conception  of  God  and  of  the 

*Amos,  9:7. 


BELIGIOUS  EXPEEIENCE  AND   THE   GOD-CONCEFT  47 

higher  life  that  has  not  to  the  present  day  been  superseded  in  our 
Western  world  and  which  seems  to  be  universal  in  its  appeal. 

Jesus  primarily  conceived  of  God  as  a  Father  of  humanity,  and 
much  has  been  made  of  this  preference.  In  subsequent  estimates 
of  the  significance  of  Jesus,  the  figurative  expression  has  been  exalted 
to  the  plane  of  literal  fact.  Our  own  belief  is  that  Jesus  no  more 
thought  of  himself  as  the  only  son  than  did  the  Psalmist  who  applied 
the  name  father  to  Jehovah.  Jehovah  is  a  Father  just  as  he  is  a 
Shepherd,  a  Protector  and  Shield,  a  Teacher,  a  Judge,  or  a  Rock  in 
a  Weary  Land.  Jesus 's  choice  of  the  word  father  to  express  his  con- 
ception of  Jehovah,  is  to  be  understood  on  the  basis  of  the  ethical 
values  he  recognized.  These  values  were  of  the  inner  spiritual  life, 
intimate  and  personal.  Of  utmost  importance  for  him  was  the  main- 
tenance in  an  individual  of  a  proper  motive  or  attitude,  which  was 
the  having  at  heart  of  the  interests  of  all  men.  For  Jesus,  the  human 
race  represents  a  vast  brotherhood,  all  sons  of  a  common  Father. 
He  recognized  the  Father  as  the  source  and  preserver  of  all  values, 
both  those  that  reside  in  the  objects  of  the  physical  environment 
and  those  that  have  their  existence  in  moral  relations.  W©  pray, 
"Our  Father  who  art  in  Heaven,  hallowed  be  thy  name.  Thy 
kingdom  come.  Thy  will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  Heaven. 
Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread.  Forgive  us  our  debts"  as  we 
exhibit  thy  spirit  in  our  dealings  with  thine  other  children. 

Jesus  considered  himself  the  lineal  descendant  of  Jewish  religious 
tradition.  He  came  not  to  destroy  the  Law,  but  that  it  might  be 
fulfilled  in  the  true  spirit  of  its  underlying  principles.  He  literally 
preaches  anew  the  messages  of  the  prophets.  His  conception  of  God 
combines  the  elements  of  universal  power  and  absolute  goodness. 
God  is  all-powerful  for  good.  His  kingdom  shall  come  upon  earth 
and  is  being  daily  furthered.  To  be  of  this  kingdom  necessitates  a 
state  of  mind  of  which  the  keynote  is  expansiveness  of  interest.  If 
your  life  is  to  be  one  with  God,  says  Jesus,  exemplify  in  your  deal- 
ings with  mankind  the  same  solicitude  and  love  that  God  exhibits 
toward  you.  The  Universe  is  friendly  to  you;  then  should  you  also 
be  friendly  to  men.  The  call  is  to  a  great  mission:  Be  ye  perfect 
even  as  God  is  perfect.  And  as  a  preparation  for  this  mission,  recog- 
nize your  own  weakness  and  unfitness.  Cleanse  your  heart  of  pride 
and  self-satisfaction,  becoming  as  a  little  child,  and  thus  make  room 
for  the  thoughts  and  actions  that  are  of  God's  kingdom.  Gain  your 
own  worth  from  the  greatness  of  the  cause  you  serve.  Live  in  the 
lives  and  interests  of  others.  Sow  the  seed  of  altruism  and  reap  the 
harvest  of  a  richer,  deeper  soul-life  for  yourself. 


48       BELIGIOUS   VALUES  AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

3.    A  Religion  Compatihle  with  Modern  Science 

We  have  watched  the  development  of  religion  from  its  most 
primitive  forms  to  its  manifestation  in  an  ethical  monotheism.  In 
the  whole  story  of  this  spiritual  evolution  there  has  been  little 
notice  taken  of  intellectual  consistency.  Certainly  it  was  present, 
but  it  operated  within  the  easy  boundaries  of  poetry.  The  point  of 
view  taken  is  well  represented  by  Hocking  in  "The  Meaning  of  God 
in  Human  Experience,"  when  he  says,  "Taking  religious  ideas  liter- 
ally and  fixedly  is,  in  fact,  a  modern  and  Western  peculiarity.  The 
Oriental  mind  realizes  that  the  spiritual  atmosphere  that  men  or 
gods  may  breathe,  must  be  created;  it  knows  nothing  of  empirical 
truth  in  matters  of  religion,  truth  passively  taken;  and  postulate 
joins  hands  with  poetry  in  constituting  the  medium  in  which  all 
spirituality  may  live.  "^ 

When  men  began  to  cast  their  observations  and  theories  regard- 
ing reality  in  the  stable  moulds  of  fact,  when  they  left  off  telling 
tales,  philosophy  began.  The  history  of  Greek  philosophy  is  a 
progressive  record  of  the  overthrow  of  simple  faith  in  poetic  crea- 
tions, in  favor  of  an  intellectually  consistent  formulation  of  reality. 
The  first  mature  systems  of  Greek  philosophy  were  the  materialism 
of  Democritus  and  the  idealism  of  Plato.  Both  may  be  called  scien- 
tific, but  both  were  speculative  science.  The  latter  has  been  closely 
connected  with  the  structure  of  classical  Christianity,  for  which  it 
afforded  an  intellectual  groundwork  that  so  perfectly  corresponded 
with  the  poetic  religion  of  the  Jews  that  for  long  centuries  the  hybrid 
formed  of  their  union  was  able  to  meet  the  spiritual  needs  of  the 
people  of  the  Western  world.  But  when  a  new  spirit  of  inquiry, 
based  on  the  observation  and  the  manipulation  of  experience  came 
into  vogue  in  Western  Europe,  the  speculative  science  of  the  Greeks 
was  irretrievably  overthrown,  dogmatic  materialism  as  well  as  dog- 
matic idealism  falling  before  the  critical  philosophy  of  Kant.  The 
story  of  this  disintegration  of  the  intellectual  supports  of  classical 
Christianity  has  been  told  in  a  previous  chapter  and  the  attempts 
of  speculative  philosophy  to  build  anew  the  walls  of  a  ruined  temple 
have  been  viewed  and  discarded.  What  we  now  propose  is  to  take 
with  us  the  method  that  has,  in  the  preceding  section  of  this  chapter, 
described  for  us  and  made  understandable  the  meaning  and  the 
evolution  of  religions  among  men,  into  the  experiences  of  a  modern 
life,  with  the  expectation,  not  of  creating  a  religion  and  a  God,  but 
of  finding  a  vital,  inspiring,  and  satisfying  contact  with  reality  that 
will  prove  to  be  the  religion  that  we  are  seeking;  and  of  then  being 

5  P.  149, 


SELIGIOUS  EXPEEIENCE  AND   THE   GOD-CONCEPT  49 

able  to  define  the  meaning  of  God  with  reference  to  the  experience 
thus  discovered. 

It  will  be  said  at  once  by  the  reader  and  critic  that  the  God  of 
the  ages  of  faith  described  in  the  foregoing  section  was  believed  in 
as  an  entity,   a  Being  that  had  independent,  personal   existence, 
whereas  the  man  who  has  analyzed  out  the  elements  that  enter  into 
the  conception  of  God  and  has  explained  his  existence  as  residing  in 
certain  values,  can  only  be  practising  self-deception  in  making  an 
appeal  or  voicing  a  hymn  of  praise  and  thanksgiving  to  his  own 
psychological  product.     It  is  not  the  writer's  purpose  to  try  to 
underestimate  the  thorough-going  difference  in  standpoint  that  his 
description  involves  as  against  the  attitude  of  an  age  of  faith.     It 
must  be  admitted  that  science  limits  the  grounds  of  faith.    When  the 
lightning  bolt  is  the  missile  of  Jove  and  the  thunder  is  the  voice  of 
Jehovah,  there  is  much  greater  room  for  religious  expression  than 
when  lightning  is  known  as  an  electric  spark  that  finds  its  point  of 
discharge  according  to  physical  laws,  and  when  thunder  is  known 
as  the  result  of  sudden  heating  and  expansion  of  the  atmosphere. 
Pestilence  in  a  scientific  age  does  not  mean  the  hand  of  God,  but  it 
signifies  the  presence  of  germ-breeding  filth  and  bad  sanitary  condi- 
tions.    Boils  are  not  the  special  dispensation  of  God  but  are  the 
result  of  bad  blood.    The  more  there  is  of  knowledge  of  the  condi- 
tions governing  any  phase  of  human  interest  and  activity,  the  less 
there  is  of  mystery.    Under  modem  conditions  of  scientific  agricul- 
ture it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  the  worship  of  a  Baal,  or  soil-god. 
A  crop  depends  upon  known  or  ascertainable  conditions  of  soil,  heat 
and  moisture.    When  a  crop  fails,  instead  of  feeling  that  Baal  has 
been  unfavorable,  one  knows  that  the  land  needs  bone  fertilizer  or 
barnyard  manure ;  or  that  his  agricultural  project  has  been  hindered 
by  an  unusually  low  temperature,  or  an  amount  of  rainfall  below 
that  which  is  known  as  essential. 

It  will  be  said  that  scientific  knowledge  and  control  have  driven 
mystery  and  prayer  out  of  human  experience;  that  science  has 
banished  God.  Certainly  a  great  deal  of  what  was  included  in  the 
conception  of  God  has  been  removed  through  the  prevalence  of 
rational  controls,  and  if  God  were  only  a  particular  Being  with  a 
particular  sphere  of  influence,  or  if  he  were  a  concept  with  a 
specific  content,  once  for  all  given  and  unchangeable,  it  would  be 
true  that  God  is  dead  and  that  the  age  of  religion  is  past.  But 
religion  existed  before  any  god  whatsoever  was  thought  of, — before 
mankind  had  developed  an  intellectual  life  capable  of  conceiving 
reality  in  terms  of  gods  and  goddesses.  If  religion  existed  before  it 
was  objectified  in  god-worship,  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  it  repre- 


50       BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

sents  a  function  of  experience  that  is  present  even  after  an  intel- 
lectual criterion  has  developed  that  refuses  to  allow  the  description 
of  the  religious  aspects  of  life  in  the  poetical  language  of  myth  and 
theology.  The  writer  takes  the  position  that  religion  is  a  function  of 
life,  and  that  wherever  men  are  alive  to  the  meaning  and  possibilities 
of  life,  it  will  be  present. 

Obviously,  the  next  thing  to  be  done  in  the  development  of  our 
thesis  is  to  present,  as  far  as  possible,  the  religious  experience  of  a 
modern  man  who  is  as  thoroughgoing  in  his  intellectual  life  as  the 
scientific  attitude  compels  him  to  be.  This  does  not  mean  that  every 
modern  man  will  have  the  experiences  described,  for  religion  is,  like 
many  other  experiences,  somewhat  of  a  specialty.  But  we  shall  hope 
to  describe  some  of  the  religious  experiences  of  a  man  whom  we  shall 
choose  and  whom  you  will  recognize,  perhaps,  in  your  colleague  and 
neighbor,  and  in  yourself. 

The  writer  admits  at  the  outset  the  lack  of  a  scientific  criterion  of 
the  choice  of  experiences  that  he  will  denominate  as  religious.  He 
offers  a  tentative  list,  at  the  same  time  recognizing  that  he  has  prob- 
ably erred  on  the  side  of  omission,  and  possibly  on  the  side  of  inclu- 
sion. The  list  as  given  has  been  chosen  with  reference  to  four 
criteria:  first,  the  salient  points  of  experience  that  have  been  taken 
account  of  in  so  numerous  religions  and  mythologies;  second,  the 
literature  of  the  occidental  religious  tradition  (excepting  always 
the  other-world  emphasis  of  an  eschatology  based  on  Greek  meta- 
physics) ;  third,  the  messages  of  modern  prophetic  agencies,  partic- 
ularly the  pulpit  that  is  in  touch  with  modem  life  as  seen  through  the 
medium  of  social  science;  and,  fourth,  such  introspections  into  his 
own  experience  as  seem  to  the  writer  to  correspond  to  what  others 
call  religion.  The  method  pursued  is  not,  to  be  sure,  rigorously 
scientific,  but  it  seems  to  be  impossible  at  the  present  writing  to 
reduce  the  conception  in  mind  to  more  satisfactory  form. 

To  begin  with,  a  certain  kind  of  mystery  enters  into  some  of  the 
experiences  that  are  generally  recognized  as  religious,  as,  for  exam- 
ple, the  mystery  of  the  cosmos,  of  birth  and  of  death.  The  mere 
brute  presence  of  the  universe,  without  beginning  and  without  end 
in  time  and  without  limit  in  space,  is  a  matter  that  presents  the 
thoughtful  man  with  characteristic  feelings.  It  is  not  merely  a 
puzzle  that  confronts  him,  but  a  mystery  of  a  degree  of  finality  that 
completely  baffles  him.  The  potency  of  this  experience  is  exhibited 
in  the  cosmological  proof  of  the  existence  of  God,  for  men  felt  them- 
selves compelled  to  explain  the  mystery  by  positing  God  as  the  first 
cause  of  it  all.  Kant's  logic  showed  the  futility  of  such  an  easy  way 
out  of  the  dilemma,  but  even  in  the  presence  of  his  proof  of  the  im- 


RELIGIOUS  EXPEEIENCE  AND   THE   GOD-CONCEPT  51 

possibility  of  proof  of  a  beginning,  the  existent  fact  of  cosmic  reality- 
finds  men  in  the  same  attitude  of  mysterious  awe  as  caused  them  in  a 
less  critical  age  to  call  the  name  of  God.  The  same  feeling  of  mystery 
is  present  when  one  looks  at  a  new-born  babe.  You  may  know  the 
facts  of  embryology,  but  that  does  not  lessen  the  wonder  of  this  new- 
created  life.  Protoplasmic  cells  were  transmuted  from  the  common- 
place materials  of  ordinary  diet  into  muscular  and  nervous  and  other 
tissue,  and  now  it  lives,  a  human  being  fraught  with  all  the  possibil- 
ities of  existence.  Had  it  failed  to  wail,  had  it  failed  to  breathe,  it 
had  not  been.  That  little  difference  between  being  and  not-being  as 
a  living  organism  is  the  point  at  which  one  always  sticks  and  before 
which  one  bows  in  reverence.  Closely  akin  to  the  mystery  that  accom- 
panies the  beginning  of  life  is  that  which  is  present  when  death  puts 
in  its  claim.  Here  was  a  man  even  as  you  and  I ;  a  friend,  a  busi- 
ness associate,  who  moved  and  talked  and  laughed.  Now  he  is  cold. 
He  is  not  here.  Where  has  he  gone?  What  has  happened  to  him? 
We  are  impatient  when  it  is  answered  his  heart  stopped  beating,  his 
isreathing  ceased.  A  fool  could  say  as  much.  But  what  has  hap- 
pened, we  ask?  and  no  answer  is  forthcoming. 

Then,  too,  men  find  themselves  worshipful  in  the  presence  of  the 
perfection  of  the  natural  world.  This  experience  was  long  taken  as 
an  infallible  proof  of  the  existence  of  God.  If  a  thing  exhibits  fore- 
sight and  design,  men  naturally  think  that  there  is  foresight  and 
design  back  of  it.  Rocks  do  no  fall  together  by  accident  to  form 
bridges  and  cathedrals ;  wheels  and  pivots  do  not  spontaneously  col- 
lect themselves  into  a  watch.  On  the  same  analogy,  the  world,  a 
larger  device,  does  not  come  into  existence  haphazard,  but  by  design ; 
and,  therefore,  as  explanatory  of  the  perfection  of  nature,  men  have 
posited  God  as  its  maker  and  builder.  One  may  be  thoroughly  famil- 
iar with  the  Kantian  criticism  of  the  validity  of  this  proof,  as  given 
in  other  pages  of  this  paper,  but  the  facts  that  led  men  to  embark 
upon  that  way  of  demonstration  are  yet  present.  One  has  but  to 
think  of  the  precision  of  movement  of  the  heavenly  bodies;  has  but 
to  see  a  man  and  know  what  processes  are  involved  in  his  moving 
and  thinking ;  has  only  to  observe  the  instinctive  life  of  bee  or  bird, — 
to  feel  a  sense  of  reverent  worship  in  the  presence  of  the  facts 
observed. 

Again,  one  has  a  feeling  of  personal  insigpificanee  as  he  views  the 
sublime  aspects  of  nature.  When  one  looks  up  at  the  starlit  heavens 
above  him  and  has  a  feeling  of  the  stupendous  distances,  the  mighty 
masses,  the  unthinkable  forces,  that  are  involved  in  celestial  me- 
chanics; when  he  tries  to  imagine  the  wealth  of  numbers  of  those 
glowing  points  or  to  find  a  limit  to  their  presence  in  space ;  when  he 


52        SELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

allows  the  sheer  beauty  and  majesty  and  peace  of  it  all  to  enter  his 
mind  and  dwell  there,  he  has  had  an  experience  that  should  be 
named  religious. 

Not  only  does  one  have  this  feeling  of  personal  insignificance  in 
the  presence  of  the  greatness  and  the  vastness  of  the  natural  world, 
but  before  other  aspects  of  it  as  well.  He  is  reduced  to  awesome  fear 
by  its  uncontrollable  force.  Rivers  at  flood,  overflowing  their  banks 
and  destroying  property  and  life ;  ocean  storms,  with  waves  running 
mountainously,  tossing  about  as  if  they  were  corks  upon  a  rivulet  the 
mightiest  engines  of  war  and  commerce  that  man's  ingenuity  can 
produce,  and  swallowing  up  men's  hopes  without  feeling  or  remorse; 
the  devastating  tornado,  crumpling  up  the  buildings  of  human 
hands  as  if  they  were  cardboard  and  exacting  its  toll  of  death  and 
destruction ;  the  dread  terror  of  the  thunderbolt,  instantaneous  and 
incalculable, — all  such  meetings  bring  men  upon  their  knees. 

Furthermore,  man  is  controlled,  even  in  his  most  practical  and 
commonplace  activities,  by  contingencies  that  beset  him  behind  and 
before,  and  render  at  naught  his  most  cherished  purposes.  The  seed 
that  one  plants  in  the  ground,  after  toilsome  preparation  and  with 
anticipation  of  an  abundant  crop,  lives  a  precarious  existence  and 
dies  fruitless  for  want  of  rain.  The  growing  cornfield,  full  of 
promise  of  sustenance  for  man  and  beast,  is  stripped  bare  by  the 
devastating  hail.  The  life  begun  with  every  promise  of  success  and 
usefulness,  falls  by  the  way,  the  victim  of  accident  or  disease;  and 
you  say  farewell  to  the  friend  of  your  heart  when  his  race  stops  in 
full  career.  Man's  life,  from  the  day  of  his  birth  to  the  day  of  his 
death,  is  waylaid  with  contingencies.  To  be  sure,  this  thought  is  not 
sufficient  to  destroy  the  optimism  of  life,  but  it  is  certainly  enough 
to  temper  our  happiness  with  sadness,  to  slow  up  our  headlong  pur- 
suits, and  to  give  a  certain  depth  and  seriousness  to  character,  Man 
can  never  be  sufficient  to  himself ;  he  can  not  even  find  self-sufficiency 
in  his  labors,  his  friendships,  and  his  ideals.  There  is  always  a 
residue  of  uncharted  possibility  which  is  present  to  lay  him  by  the 
heels ;  and  the  man  who  truly  knows  life  and  is  "reverent  before  it, 
recognizes  the  limit  of  foresight  and  prediction. 

One  has,  moreover,  a  religious  feeling  in  the  presence  of  the  benev- 
olence of  nature.  As  one  walks  abroad  after  a  rain  that  has  drenched 
the  soil  and  brought  renewed  growth  to  the  plant  world  and  comfort 
to  man  and  beast,  he  feels  within  him  the  stir  of  elemental  feelings 
of  worship  that  are  as  old  as  the  race.  The  renewal  of  life  in  the 
springtime,  after  the  long  dominion  of  frost  is  over,  and  the  gather- 
ing of  the  harvest  in  midsummer  and  autumn,  no  less  awaken  within 
one  the  sense  of  the  goodness  of  his  station.    Indeed,  if  there  were 


BELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE  AND   THE   GOD-CONCEPT  53 

not  more  of  security  than  of  harm,  of  success  than  of  failure,  of  life 
than  of  death,  our  God  would  not  be  a  loving  God;  our  religion 
would  not  be  one  of  hope,  but  would  be  one  of  despair;  our  deity 
would  be  a  devil.  To  be  sure,  storms  are  comparatively  few,  and 
accidents  more  frequent  in  anticipation  than  in  realization.  "We 
pursue  our  cherished  ends,  on  the  whole,  successfully  and  unafraid. 
Life  is  rich,  or  tolerable,  and  always  desirable.  At  the  last  analysis, 
this  positive  valuation  put  upon  life  is  the  foundation  of  our  occi- 
dental religion  and  philosophy.  The  habit  and  the  anticipation  of 
success  build  bridges  from  past  enjoyments  of  the  goodness  of  life 
over  the  pitfalls  and  morasses  of  accident  and  loss  and  failure,  to 
the  solid  ground  of  future  realization  of  predominant  welfare.  And 
thus  arises  a  conception  of  life  as  good,  and  of  the  universe  as,  on 
the  whole,  friendly  to  our  personal  issues. 

The  religious  feelings  that  have  so  far  been  described  have  re- 
lated to  man's  reaction  in  the  presence  of  his  physical  environment. 
Others,  yet  to  be  named,  are  representative  of  experiences  that  he 
has  as  a  member  of  a  social  group.  Man's  ethical  life  has  always 
been  of  profound  concern  to  himself  and  others,  and  has,  with 
equal  unanimity  of  practise,  been  put  under  the  protection  of 
divinities  or  has  been  their  particular  and  jealous  interest.  As  a 
practical  example  of  this  fact,  we  have  seen  how  successively  widen- 
ing ethical  standards  were  automatically  applied  to  Jehovah  in  the 
course  of  Hebrew  history.  In  attempting  to  single  out  the  partic- 
ular feelings  or  experiences  that  are  related  to  this  aspect  of  religion, 
three  seem  to  stand  out  as  predominant,  namely,  a  feeling  of  personal 
worth  and  significance,  a  pervasive  and  warming  expansiveness  of 
sympathy,  and  an  invigoration  of  action  in  accordance  with  one's 
standards  and  ideals. 

We  have  said  that  there  is  something  about  man's  natural  envi- 
ronment that  tends  to  produce  in  him  a  sense  of  personal  insignif- 
icance. "When  he  views  life  ''sub  specie  aeternitatis,"  his  selfhood 
shrivels  up.  But  in  the  ethical  realm  he  comes  into  his  own  heritage ; 
he  is  on  human  ground.  He  is  a  significant  part  of  the  process  of 
ethicising  conduct  that  has  gone  on  only  through  such  as  he.  If  we 
employ  figurative  language,  we  may  say  that  God  has  always  spoken 
his  ethical  messages  through  men.  The  prophet  is  as  necessary  to 
the  act  of  revelation  as  is  the  spiritual,  divine  source.  In  that  way 
the  prophet  takes  on  a  divine  character,  too,  and  has  personal  worth. 
Denuded  of  the  figures  of  speech,  such  a  statement  as  the  foregoing 
means  that  men  from  time  to  time  have  turned  their  attention  vigor- 
ously and  undividedly  to  the  subject  of  human  conduct  and  have 
gained  insights  that  they  have  regarded  as  worthy,  even  divine,  and 


54       JSELIGIOUS   VALVES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

that  the  call  has  been  upon  them  to  give  to  others  their  own  light. 
This  sense  of  expert  knowledge  and  of  commission  to  speak,  operates 
in  the  direction  of  magnifying  and  intensifying  the  feeling  of  per- 
sonal worth. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  close  connection  between  ethical  invention 
or  virtuosoship  and  the  sense  of  personal  worth,  but  it  is  not  to  be 
implied  that  the  condition  of  originality  is  essential  to  the  latter 
experience.  One  may  gain  an  enlarged  selfhood  through  mere 
enlistment  in  ethical  enterprises, — through  a  personal  ratification 
and  adoption  of  ideals  that  one  finds  existent.  Indeed,  such  is  likely 
to  be  the  beginning  of  all  ethical  enthusiasm.  This  sense  of  redis- 
covery of  ethical  values,  this  enlistment  in  the  army  of  the  Lord, 
if  you  please,  is  accompanied  by  an  experience  that  is  unique.  It 
is  one  of  warmth  and  expansiveness  of  affection,  of  the  presence  of  a 
general  or  universal  sympathy.  There  is  a  feeling  that  one  would  do 
largely  and  well,  that  he  would  like  to  remake  the  world  to  a  better 
pattern,  that  one  would  increase  by  one's  own  efforts  and  enthusiasm 
the  sum-total  of  human  welfare  in  the  world.  Probably  such  experi- 
ences are  more  frequent  and  more  powerful  in  one's  early  life,  espe- 
cially during  adolescence,  but  it  certainly  may  be  present  on  later 
occasions  as  well.  There  will  be  times  when  one  seems  to  be  better 
than  oneself;  when  he  would  devote  himself  immediately  and  un- 
reservedly to  an  ethical  cause  or  to  all  ethical  causes.  His  experi- 
ence is  catholic  in  its  inclusiveness  of  good  causes.  Such  meetings 
as  these  are  the  mountain  peaks  of  the  ethical  life.  It  is  on  such 
occasions  that  one  builds  tabernacles  and  worships.  One's  main 
difiiculty  is  that  one  is  not  able  to  bring  all  of  the  potentially  realized 
power  down  into  the  plane  of  every-day  existence.  One's  faith  is  too 
small  to  perform  all  the  miracles  that  one  had  proposed. 

There  is  a  parallel  to  the  facts  above  described  in  the  history  of 
a  love.  There  are  times  when  mind  and  body  conspire  to  make  the 
sympathy  and  the  loyalty  of  two  persons  for  one  another  a  very 

» 

poignant  realization.  The  lovers  skip  over  the  ever-present  clods  and 
boulders  and  pitfalls  of  moral  and  mental  and  social  differences,  of 
drudgery,  of  poverty,  mayhap,  without  any  realization  of  the  exist- 
ence of  such  things.  But  the  pace  will  come  to  be  less  furious,  and 
obstacles  will  have  to  be  reckoned  with.  Happy  is  that  love  which 
finds  itself  able  to  walk  and  not  faint,  to  furnish  an  ever-present  store 
of  affection  to  infuse  the  drudgery  of  life  with  its  essence,  to  insure 
mutual  contribution  to  compromise,  to  overlook  the  weakness,  the 
latent  incapacity,  the  mistakes  that  most  lives  will  furnish  in 
abundant  measure.  But  all  these  things  love  can  do  and  continually 
does  do.    Just  so,  the  experiences  that  men  have  upon  the  mountain- 


RELIGIOUS  EXPEEIENCE  AND   THE   GOD-CONCEPT  55 

tops  of  ethical  vision,  while  lost  in  their  original  freshness  and 
poignancy,  follow  them  down  into  every-day,  practical  life,  to  invig- 
orate them  in  the  pursuit  of  their  vocations  and  to  strengthen  them 
in  the  service  of  their  causes.  This,  then,  is  the  third  specific  char- 
acter that  appears  in  the  religious  experience  as  it  develops  in  con- 
nection with  the  social  life :  a  sense  of  direction,  a  knowledge  of 
purpose,  a  consciousness  of  satisfaction,  even  joy,  in  the  doing  of 
one's  every-day  duty  as  it  appears  in  one's  vocation,  in  one's  family 
life,  or  in  any  other  capacity  that  one's  social  setting  establishes  for 
him. 

The  objection  may  be  raised  that  the  elements  named  herein  as 
entering  into  and  constituting  the  religious  experience  are  too  few 
and  make  that  experience  too  meager.  It  may  be  said,  however, 
that  the  elements  chosen  are  fundamental  and  far-reaching,  em- 
bracing man's  reaction  to  the  cosmic  mother  that  brings  him  forth 
and  sustains  him,  and  his  self-expression  as  a  man  among  men. 
Furthermore,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  religion  is  a  com- 
plex matter.  Many  centuries  ago,  a  religious  expert  made  a  pro- 
nouncement upon  the  subj'ect  to  the  effect  that  the  essence  of  reli- 
gion is  ethical  conduct  and  reverence  before  life.^  These  fundamental 
attitudes  are,  of  course,  modified  and  elaborated  by  the  entire  experi- 
ence of  the  individual  who  exhibits  them.  The  attitude  toward  nature 
as  shown  in  the  primitive  Bushman  or  Algonkin,  in  the  theologizing 
Greek  or  Jew,  and  in  the  modem  man  highly  developed  in  his 
knowledge  of  causes  and  controls,  will  differ  according  to  his  under- 
standing and  means  of  description.  The  invigoration  of  the  will 
of  the  Melanesian  follows  the  line  of  Melanesian  ethical  standards. 
So  likewise  of  the  Greek,  or  Jewish,  or  any  other  race.  The 
Christian  of  the  early  Middle  Ages  was  impelled  by  his  mystie 
experiences  of  God  to  seek  him  in  terms  of  self-denial  and  the  casti- 
gation  of  his  body ;  the  Christian  of  the  present  day  finds  his  activity 
heightened  in  ways  suggested  by  the  prevalent  social  ethics. 

We  have  described  religion  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  as  a 
natural  psychological  product,  and  have  tried  to  indicate  in  very 
brief  fashion  the  development  of  religion  as  related  to  successively 
higher  intellectual  and  ethical  backgrounds.  We  believe  that  the 
term  natural  is  correctly  applied  not  only  to  the  rude  gropings  of 
primitive  man,  but  to  the  reaction  to  his  total  environment  on  the 
part  of  the  man  exhibiting  the  most  highly  developed  intellectual  and 
ethical  standards.  Our  final  task  has  been  an  attempt  to  exhibit  a 
religion  that  no  longer  takes  account  of  a  Being  called  God,  having 

6Micah,  6:  6-8. 


56       BELIGIOUS   VALVES  AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

specific,  individual  reality  independent  of  the  sense  of  biological  and 
ethical  values  as  resident  in  the  experiences  of  human  beings. 

If  it  be  allowed  that  we  have  described  a  religious  experience 
without  having  had  recourse  to  the  conception  of  God,  there  yet  re- 
mains the  question  whether  such  religion  has  any  use  for  that  con- 
ception. The  answer  must  be  carefully  stated.  If  by  God  is  meant 
a  Being  independent  of  the  causal  series  of  the  given  natural  uni- 
verse, and  independent  of  those  human  values  and  human  intel- 
lectual tendencies  that  have,  according  to  our  description,  resulted 
in  his  creation  at  the  hands  of  mankind,  then  the  answer  is  that  the 
presumed  existence  of  such  a  Being  is  contrary  to  facts  supported  by 
the  best  intellectual  standards  and  usages  of  our  day.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  by  the  term  God  is  meant  a  name  for  a  set  of  experiences 
that  are  described  as  religious,  then  there  is  every  reason  for  the 
retention  and  use  of  the  word. 

The  reality  of  religion  is  just  the  same  as  the  reality  of  fear, 
ambition,  or  the  paper  on  which  you  read  these  lines.  What  is  fear, 
for  example,  except  a  name  that  stands  for  certain  experiences? 
Detach  the  word  fear  from  its  meaning  and  it  is  a  strange,  unrelated, 
and  crazy  thing.  Spell  it,  say  it  aloud,  look  at  it  detached  from  its 
setting  on  the  page;  and  what  have  you?  Or  paper!  What  is  paper 
but  the  things  you  do  with  it?  the  impressions  you  get  of  it?  Take 
it  apart  from  its  meaning  and  you  have  nothing.  It  does  not  seem 
reasonable  to  condemn  the  significance  of  names  because  they  are 
only  names;  for  they  lead  us  up  into  the  presence  of  our  realities 
and,  in  fact,  stand  so  close  to  those  realities  that  they  are  thought  of 
and  used  as  the  very  realities  themselves. 

The  writer  would  use  the  name  God  in  the  same  way  that  he 
uses  any  other  name;  in  fact,  in  the  same  way  many  races  have 
used  the  names  of  their  religious  beings.  Venus  was  to  the  Greeks 
not  merely  the  name  of  the  goddess  of  love  and  beauty ;  Venus  was 
love  and  beauty.  The  Greeks  caught  the  reality  in  the  name.  The 
reality  as  named  was  their  divinity.  Just  so,  it  is  not  thought  by  the 
writer  to  be  in  any  sense  derogatory  to  the  dignity  of  God  that  he  be 
known  as  a  named  reality.  God  is  the  symbol  of  a  set  of  experi- 
ences called  religious.  He  is  not  an  invention  of  a  lively  brain,  or 
the  mere  product  of  a  philosophical  interest.  God  is  the  name  for 
the  reality  of  religious  experiences ;  the  religious  experiences  are 
the  reality  of  God.  God  and  religion  are  synonymous,  and  both  stand 
for  the  reality  of  a  realized  or  realizable  experience.  To  say  that 
one  has  God  in  his  life  is  to  say  that  he  is  religious.  Both  names, 
God  and  religion,  are  only  convenient  means  of  representing  the 
meant  facts,  without  which  both  would  be  strange  and  meaningless 
sounds. 


BELIGIOUS  EXPEEIENCE  AND   THE   GOD-CONCEPT  57 

The  objection  will  probably  be  raised  that  the  use  of  the  word  God 
has  been  preempted  in  favor  of  another  conception  that  conveys  the 
meaning,  among  others,  of  independent,  substantial  existence,  and 
that  it  shows  a  lack  of  initiative  to  take  an  old  name  to  cover  a  new 
meaning.  Outside  of  the  fact  that  such  is  always  the  fate  of  words, 
it  might  be  said  that  the  similarity  between  the  two  conceptions  is 
more  important  than  their  differences.  There  is  the  unlikeness  of  a 
slightly  different  projection.  In  the  one  case,  God  is  projected  be- 
yond experience;  in  the  other,  he  lives  within  it.  But  both  concep- 
tions represent  the  same  experiences  and  operate  through  the  same 
functions.  If  one  wants  to  make  himself  understood  when  he  talks 
about  the  facts  of  religion,  he  can  do  so  by  using  the  name  of  God. 
If  he  wishes  to  participate  in  the  religious  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
another,  he  will  translate  in  his  own  way  the  use  which  that  one 
makes  of  God.  Even  if  he  is  talking  with  some  one  of  like  mind  with 
himself,  he  will  use  the  word  God  as  a  means  of  clear  and  concise  self- 
expression.  Accordingly,  there  is  every  reason  for  the  continued  use 
of  the  name  God  to  signify  our  religious  experiences,  as  it  makes  for 
continuity  in  the  religious  tradition  of  the  Western  world,  and  fur- 
nishes a  simple  and  poetic  method  of  describing  a  set  of  experiences 
that  are  not  too  clearly  defined  but  very  generally  comprehended. 

It  seems  necessary  to  anticipate  and  try  to  meet  a  final  objection 
to  our  thesis.  It  will  be  said  that  such  a  God  as  has  been  described 
is  no  God  at  all.  His  existence  is  dependent  wholly  upon  a  human 
individual.  If  that  individual  has  the  experiences  herein  described, 
then  God  is ;  if  he  does  not  have  them,  then  God  is  not.  The  prob- 
lem as  stated  has  at  least  two  references.  One  of  these  is  to  the 
continuity  of  the  God  experience  in  the  life  of  any  individual.  It 
will  be  said  that  the  feelings  on  which  the  God-consciousness  hinges 
are  comparatively  infrequent;  and  where  is  God  in  the  meantime? 
In  answer,  it  may  be  advanced  that,  although  the  most  significant 
meetings  are  occasional,  they  throw  their  influence  over  the  intervals 
between;  they  color  the  whole  of  one's  experience  and  finally  come 
to  infuse  their  spirit  into  an  habitual  way  of  conceiving  reality  and 
confronting  life.  Neither  must  one  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  in  the 
lives  of  many  persons  who  conceive  of  God  as  a  Being,  he  sometimes 
appears  to  be  absent.  Even  in  that  supreme  experience  of  courage 
and  self-sacrifice  of  Jesus,  he  had  a  feeling  that  God  had  forsaken 
him ;  and  many  lesser  men  have  had  the  same  experience  for  longer 
periods  than  the  momentary  eclipse  that  the  Master's  faith  suffered. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  some  men  are  forsaken  and  call  in  vain. 

A  second  reference  of  the  problem  stated  is  to  those  lives  that 
never  experience  God,  or  religion,  at  all.    It  is  said  that  God  exists 


68       BELIGIOUS   VALVES  AND  INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 

whether  wicked  and  callous  men  know  him  or  not.  But  how  differ- 
ent is  the  position  of  men  who  do  not  know  God  under  either  of  the 
two  conceptions  of  God's  being?  If  God  is  worth  taking  account  of 
at  all,  to  know  him  is  of  positive  worth.  That  man  who  is  hard  and 
unresponsive,  who  does  not  expand  to  the  meaning  of  life,  has  already 
had  his  sad  reward.  If  the  opponent  is  thinking  of  a  God  who  will 
clap  the  sinner  into  hell  after  he  dies,  there  may  be  a  practical  ad- 
vantage, even  if  an  ethical  loss,  in  the  conception  of  God  as  a  Being. 
But,  brought  down  to  the  level  of  concrete  facts,  the  different  con- 
ceptions see  the  unreligious  man  in  the  same  light. 

4.    Practical  Conclusions 

The  practical  religious  situation  to-day  exhibits  a  strange  medley 
of  intellectual  points  of  view.  There  are  men  (and  I  am  speaking 
now  of  men  who  possess  intellectual  interests)  who  understand  God's  1 

nature  and  prove  his  existence  in  terms  of  the  dogmatic  rationalism 
that  represents  the  spirit  of  Greek  thought.  There  are  others  whose 
intellectual  setting  for  their  religious  experience  is  some  form  of 
post-Kantian  Idealism.  There  are  yet  others  who  frankly  say  that  they 
do  not  know  what  God  is  nor  how  to  prove  his  existence,  but  their 
firm  conviction  that  he  is  and  that  he  is  working  mightily  for  good, 
affords  them  all  the  assurance  they  require  for  hearty  service.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  see  a  very  fair  unanimity  of  opinion  in  regard  to  i 
the  values  that  are  worth  preserving  and  propagating.  Religion  has 
ceased,  in  a  large  measure,  to  be  an  other-world  interest  and  is  con- 
cerned with  the  promotion  of  social  values  that  represent  the  pro- 
gressive ethical  spirit  of  the  times.  The  missionary  movement,  for 
example,  is  not  bidding  for  support  on  the  grounds  that  heathen  may 
be  saved  from  hell,  but  that  an  opportunity  may  be  given  to  carry 
to  those  lands  that  are  socially  backward,  those  ideas  and  practises 
that  make  for  the  larger,  richer  life  here  on  earth.  And  so,  in  count- 
less lines  of  effort,  the  churches  are  exhibiting  a  concern  for  such 
values  as  are  fully  abreast  of  the  best  ethical  feeling  of  the  generation. 

This  substantial  agreement  in  ethical  aims  that  is  exhibited  in 
current  religious  life,  as  contrasted  with  the  confusion  of  intellectual 
formulas,  is  a  matter  for  congratulation.  It  is  hardly  to  be  expected 
that  all  men  will  ever  reach  the  same  plane  of  understanding,  or  that 
they  will  ever  attain  unanimity  of  belief;  it  is  a  present  fact  that 
they  have  already  largely  attained  a  unity  of  purpose.  But  if,  as 
we  have  said  and  tried  to  show  in  this  paper,  intellectual  consistency 
in  religion  is  essential  only  to  the  extent  of  being  able  to  free  the  life 
for  wholesouled  action,  and  the  really  important  thing  is  to  live 


BELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  GOD-CONCEPT  59 

consciously  and  steadfastly  in  the  presence  of  the  highest  human 
values  then  surely  disagreements  in  regard  to  intellectual  settings 
may  be  discounted  and  largely  ignored  in  the  presence  of  single- 
minded  zeal  for  the  furtherance  of  the  universal  kingdom  of  peace 
and  good-will. 


.^atBA^M^HM^a 


60       BELIGIOUS   VALUES   AND   INTELLECTUAL   CONSISTENCY 


VITA. 

Edward  Hartman  Reisner,  bom,  Fredericksburg',  Virginia,  April 
27,  1885.  Student,  Cumberland  Valley  State  Normal  School,  Ship- 
pensburg,  Pennsylvania,  1899-1901;  Ursinus  College,  1903-1906; 
Tale  University,  1906-1909 ;  Columbia  University,  1909-1911.  Pro- 
fessor of  Philosophy  and  Education,  "Washburn  College,  1911-1913. 
Assistant  Professor  of  Education,  Kansas  State  Agricultural  College, 
1913-1914.  Associate  Professor,  ihid.,  1914.  Previous  degrees: 
A.B.,  Yale,  1908;  A.M.,  Yale,  1909. 


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